L.A. theater treasure Rachel Sorsa delivers an extraordinary solo star turn in Ian McRae’s powerful but bleak Ruskin Group Theatre World Premiere drama Painted Ponies.

Sorsa plays Pam, ground down and burned out for reasons we will soon discover as she records a video that she hopes will eventually be seen by the son she hasn’t laid eyes on since he was a six-year-old child and vanished from her life forever.

That was thirty years ago, three long agonizing decades during which she has asked herself the question, “What if?” so many times that the words have lost their meaning.

What if Michael hadn’t insisted on going on the merry-go-round alone? What if Pam hadn’t headed over to a nearby payphone to call the man she was seeing? What if she hadn’t assumed that Michael was merely hiding from her when the ride was over and he didn’t appear? (After all, he’d done just that more than once before.) What if she’d notified the police more quickly?

It’s been thirty years of “what ifs” for Pam, thirty years during which she’s been asking herself, “Is he dead? Is he alive?” Thirty years of being down on her luck. Thirty years of smoking and drinking and now…

Now the time has come for Pam to put her story on video, post it on YouTube, and hope that someday, someway, somehow, Michael will see it and know that he was loved, and that he has never been forgotten.

As to why it has taken so long for Pam to take this kind of action, I will leave it to you to discover that and more, but with a heads-up in advance.

If ever a play merited a trigger warning for Extremely Upsetting Subject Matter, Painted Ponies is that play. So come prepared to be put through an emotional ringer, albeit one that yields multiple rewards, not the least of of which is getting to see the radiant Rachel Sorsa vanish into a character whose light has been so dimmed, there’s very little of it left.

Indeed, so mesmerizing is she a under Elina de Santos’ incisive direction that it hardly matters that Pam’s frailty keeps Sorsa seated on the same sofa throughout all but the play’s final few minutes unless perhaps you’re directly facing stage right in which case you’ll be seeing Pam in profile throughout the play.

The production’s uncredited set design consists of Pam’s sofa and a nearby single bed, assorted items of furniture, and Bruce Burns’ props including medicine bottles and morphine vials, all of this dramatically enhanced by Michael Redfield’s lighting design, with sound designer Jeff Gardner inserting various script-appropriate effects along the way.

Indeed, the only design mishap (if I can call it that) is a state-mandated bright green Exit sign that can’t be dimmed when a pitch-black fadeout is what’s absolutely needed for full dramatic effect.

Painted Ponies is produced by Mike Myers, John Ruskin, and Nicole Millar.

 Painted Ponies can be tough to sit through, but seeing Rachel Sorsa command the stage as few can makes the gut-wrenching seventy-five minutes you’ll spend with Pam quite memorable indeed.

Ruskin Group Theatre, 2800 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica. Through July 19. Saturdays at 5:00 and Sundays at 4:00. No performances on the 4th of July weekend.
www.ruskingrouptheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
June 27, 2026
Photos: Keith Stevenson

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

Tags: Ian McRae, Los Angeles Theater Review, Ruskin Group Theatre