The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Peter and the Starcatcher. And now Zack Rocklin-Waltch’s Clara vs. Infinity. Plays don’t get any more extraordinary than these.

Like those two Broadway, touring, and regional smashes, the Eight Ball Theater World Premiere features as its lead character a young person embarking on a danger-packed mission into the unknown.

Here the protagonist is 12-year-old Clara (Keylani Gaudart), who sets off from Boston all on her own with Washington, D.C. as her destination and a $10,000 grand prize as her goal.

It’s a trip she’s planned with utmost care, making sure to depart on a day her nurse mother (Nikki McKenzie) is working a double shift at the hospital, and with enough ingenuity to know that the only way to get the local Greyhound Bus clerk to accept her mother’s stolen credit card is to cry a whole bunch of crocodile tears.

What awaits Clara at the National Air and Space Museum is a Pi Recitation Bee, the winner of which will be the contestant who can recite more digits of Pi (π) than any other entrant, and our intrepid young heroine is hoping that her ability to recite a whopping 529 of them will be enough to send her home with a check for $10,000 in her hands.

As to why Clara and her mother find themselves in dire need of a financial boost, well that has something to do with a recent family tragedy (don’t ask me to more specific than that), and Clara’s need to prove that she’s not as pathological, or psychopathic, or wrong, or evil as she has come to believe she is.

Whatever her goals, what ensues over the course of Clara Vs. Infinity’s thoroughly riveting nearly two-hour running time is the road trip of a lifetime, one that will involve a) a bus breakdown outside Baltimore, b) the need to seek help from strangers, c) a frantic mother, d) flashbacks to a happier time when Clara’s three-member family was still intact, and e) much much more.

Still, it’s not so much Clara’s adventure into unexplored territory or her fascination with mathematics and numbers but the brilliantly imaginative way in which her story is told that makes Clara vs. Infinity a must-see.

Inspired by Clara’s love of digits, each of the play’s ten supporting players is assigned a number. (For instance, Clara’s mother is played by 9, the motel manager and his wife are played by 7 and 4, and the chatty woman Clara sits by on the bus is played by 6.)

And no, this is not a gimmick, as Clara vs. Infinity’s extraordinary final scene makes absolutely, touchingly clear, nor are discussions of the mathematical phenomena (Irrational Numbers, the Nine Point Circle Theorem, etc.) that play an integral role in making Clara who she is.

Playwright Rocklin-Waltch and director Jamie Gallo let their imaginations run wild in telling Clara’s story in the most quintessentially theatrical of ways. (If you’ve seen either The Curious Incident or Peter and the Starcatcher, you’ll have some idea of what I’m talking about, but I’ll leave it to you to discover Clara vs. Infinity’s many wonders for yourself.)

Gaudart delivers one one the year’s most touching and captivating breakout star turns as Clara, McKenzie matches her costar every step of the way as the profoundly caring of mothers, and Matthew Bridges (Oh) will shatter your heart in his climactic scenes with Clara.

Seth Gunawardena (7) and Audrey Forman (4) are particular standouts as a couple who go out of their way to help Clara and Nina Romeo (6) delights as a very chatty bus passenger.

Quaz Degraft (8) delivers an informative and engaging talk about origins of Pi while Luke Dimyan (1), Colette McCurdy (2), Alex Nimrod (3), and Kameron J. Brown (5) do standout work too in an abundance of cameo roles.

I could wax poetic about the design contributions of Kate Schaaf (set), Olivia Dakin (costumes), Cristo Montañez (lighting), Forman (hair and makeup), Dominique Jakowec (properties), and MC Macadar (projections) but I’ll let the accompanying production stills take the place of 10,000 words, and trust me when I say that Konner Syed’s sound design and Julia Moss’s original music play their own essential part in bringing Clara’s story to life.

Clara vs. Infinity is produced by Bianca Akbiyik and Marie Bland. Henry Parker-Elder is assistant director and technical director. Sun Jin is dramaturg. Isabel Stallings is intimacy coordinator.

Devin Harris and Parker-Elder as production stage managers and Anthony Sahagun is assistant stage manager. Grace Wilkerson served as rehearsal stage manager.

As emotionally powerful as it is intellectually stimulating, Clara vs. Infinity is not just the finest World Premiere play I’ve seen over the past twelve months, it’s the only one I can actually imagine on a Broadway stage. Trust me. It’s that remarkable. It’s that good.

Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles. Through April 26. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 2:00. Also Sunday April 18 at 8:00 and Saturday April 25 at 3:30.
www.eightballtheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
April 12, 2026
Photos: Marie Bland

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: Eight Ball Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Zack Rocklin-Waltch, Zephyr Theatre