If someone offered you the chance to get rich quick and improve your self-esteem in the bargain, would you take it? That’s the question posed by playwright Lauren Smerkanich in The Dignity Circle, the provocative, entertaining latest from Theatre of NOTE.

The someone in question is Sacramento real estate agent Angela S. (Sierra Marcks), who starts things off with a bang by asking us to imagine what we would do were we handed forty-thousand dollars, no strings attached.

“All you need to do,” she tells us, is “devote a fraction of that today and you will walk out of this room several weeks later with a small fortune.”

Talk about an offer too good to pass up.

What Angela doesn’t want is for us to take after her mother, who accepted the sexual harassment she suffered at work and “hid, made herself dim,” because as Mama put it, “sometimes the smartest thing to do is veil your own light.”

Veiling her own light is precisely what Judith (Jenny Soo) has been doing when realtor Angela runs into her former client at the local supermarket and finds Judith running late for a party because as usual she’s been vacillating on what kind of desert to bring.

Angela offers her a simple solution, one that will not only make hubby Scott (J.T.Melaragno) happy, but make it clear that she’s not arriving late because she misjudged the time. It’s because “you were putting in the extra effort.”

In exchange for this face-saving advice, all Judith has to do is show up at a “women’s empowerment thing with free snacks and booze” where she’ll be introduced to The Dignity Circle and climbing the ladder of success from “Lady In Waiting” to “Queen,” upon which she’ll be awarded a whopping $40,000, like today’s Queen Angela, who’s already earned that sum a half dozen times or more.

We in the audience can tell from the get-go that what Angela is proposing is not only statically impossible but most likely illegal, but not Judith, dazzled not just by Angela’s offer but by Angela herself, who seems to be living a life Judith can only dream of, particularly since Judith’s husband is controlling whereas Angela’s other half Parker (Alexis DeLaRosa) delights in his wife’s success.

Other members of The Dignity Circle include potty-mouthed business exec Kate C (Sarah Lilly), Ann N, Coco K., and Meredith S. (Zipporah Shunise), and most significantly Heather (Melanie Thompson), whose daughter’s medical bills are piling up, but who soon begins to wonder if this is the way to pay them.

Director Clara Aranovich brings out the best from her two stars, Marcks simply sensational in the role she originated at Central Works in Berkeley, and Soo morphing from meek mouse to fierce tigress in what may be her richest and most powerful performance to date.

Providing uniformly terrific support are Thompson as a woman who just might be able to see through all of Angela’s BS, Lilly as the fabulous four-letter-word-spouting Kate C., Melaragno as the quietly menacing Scott, DeLaRosa as the warmly supportive Parker, and Shunise as three quite different Dignity Circle participants.

Julia Hibner and Stephanie Yackovetsky’s lighting is spot-on as are Mariah Harrison’s costumes and Yackovetsky’s sound design.

What didn’t work for me is the play’s use of masks (designed by Harrison). Why are characters sometimes wearing them and sometimes not? I have no idea what this “writer’s concept” is supposed to signify, nor have I been able to figure out why Amanda Knehans’s modular-unit-mobile set is made of brown cardboard (to match the brown cardboard masks) or why every single prop is covered with brown paper.

These are, however, relatively minor quibbles compared to how gripping and suspenseful The Dignity Circle is and how captivating its two leading ladies are.

The Dignity Circle is produced for Theatre of NOTE by Zanotti and Marcks, Natalya Nielsen, Lynn Odell, Jordan Rivera, and Soo. Smerkanich is associate director and Nielsen is assistant director. Chloe Madriaga is fight choreographer and Melissa McNamara is intimacy director. Matt Richter is lighting consultant.

Henry Cruz, Aaron Leddick, Anastasia Leddick, Renée Torchio MacDonald, Nicole Gabriella Scipione, and Shey Lyn Zanotti are understudies.

Theatre of NOTE has been on a roll since 2023’s Kill Shelter, and like The AllStore and Tune In since then, The Dignity Circle is another winner. Mask and design quibbles aside, The Dignity Circle makes it four NOTEworthy winners in a row.

Theatre of NOTE, 1517 N. Cahuenga, Hollywood. Through March 22. Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 6:00
www.theatreofnote.com

–Steven Stanley
March 2, 2026
Photos: Nic Murphy

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Tags: Lauren Smerkanich, Los Angeles Theater Review, Theatre Of NOTE