Max Frisch’s 1950s absurdist gem The Arsonists gets a strikingly staged and marvelously performed 21st-century update at the Skylight Theatre that welcomes to the L.A. theater scene an exciting new collective appropriately called The Firebugs.

Written in 1953 as a response to Europe’s embrace of Nazism and Fascism and reconceived for contemporary audiences by translator Alistair Beaton in 2007, The Arsonists introduces us to successful businessman Gottlieb Biedermann (Brian Wallace), who like his well-coiffed wife Babbette (Tessa Auberjonois), finds himself up in arms about the series of mysterious fires that have sprung up around their city in recent days.

Even more concerning to the couple is the knowledge that these fires have apparently been set by arsonists who have a) shown up at people’s homes with wares to sell, b) gotten themselves invited in, c) wangled their way into staying overnight in a corner of the attic, and d) stuck around until e) kaboom! Another home explodes in flames.

And it’s not that Biedermann hasn’t thought about how he’d respond should a stranger knock on his door. “Even if we had three spare beds, it’s still out of the question,” he insists to wife Babbette and family maid Anna (Jazelle Villanueva).

So how is it when a shabbily-dressed stranger named Josef Schmitz (Trevor Jonathan Lown) arrives at the Biedermann abode, Gottlieb not only invites him in for a bite to eat, he offers Josef the use of his attic even after the young man reveals that the circus he was working at “got burnt down.”

Could it be the case of a man responding to flattery? (Schmitz has, after all, gone overboard in praising Biedermann’s positive attitude, his civic courage, and his conscience.) Is Biedermann too blind to see the mounting evidence, e.g., barrels of gasoline, fuses, and a detonator brought into his attic right before his eyes by Josef and his recently installed attic-mate William Eisenring (Liam Rhodes)?

Or is it simply that Gottlieb Biedermann is too fearful and self-deceiving and “decent” to do anything about it, sort of like the good citizens of Nazi-occupied Europe who turned a blind eye to the evil that was happening all around them?

Translator Beaton re-situates The Arsonists from its original, specifically mid-20th-century European setting to what the Firebugs playbill calls “Anytime. Anyplace,” thereby allowing audiences to decide for themselves which current evils they too might be turning a blind eye to.

Serious subtext aside, The Arsonists is first and foremost a comedy, albeit played straight under Luke Harlan’s pitch-perfect direction, an approach that scores a lot more laughter than would be the case had the actors played for laughs.

Not only that, but it’s made clear from the get-go that Harlan’s vision for The Arsonists will be anything but by-the-numbers as cast members Flor de Maria Chahua, Molly Kirschenbaum, and Moneer Yaqubi circulate among the audience in firefighter garb to make darned sure that no one has brought combustibles with them into the theater.

Add to that Stephen Gifford’s remarkable two-story scenic design, one whose many wonders keep revealing themselves as the play progresses, Jared A. Sayeg’s masterful lighting (ranging from starkly realistic to startlingly surreal), Drew Sensue-Weinstein’s power-punch-packing sound design, Josh Quinn’s eclectic costume mix, and a sensitivity-warning’s worth of theatrical smoke, haze, and flashing strobe light effects and you’ve got a production that looks and sounds like a million bucks.

The always splendid Wallace anchors the production as the status-conscious, self-deceiving Biedermann, Auberjonois is once again fabulous as his well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual wife, and Seamus Mulcahy delivers the evening’s quirkiest, drollest supporting turn The Arsonists’ all-seeing, all-knowing narrator.

Lown and Rhodes are equally terrific as the titular pair of firebugs, the former as the outwardly childlike, inwardly manipulative Josef and the latter as the even more calculating William, and Villanueva is a deadpan delight as the Biedermanns’ practical but powerless maid.

The Arsonists is produced by Andrew Hawkins and Jeff Marx and features Tiger Bautista’s wig design and Nicole Bernardini’s myriad props. Lauren Freedman, Lown, and Rhodes are associate producers. Casting is by Henry Russell Bergstein. Michael Lorz understudies Eisenring and Schmitz. Nico Parducho is production stage manager. Judith Borne is publicist.

Arriving just in time to beat the onrush of new productions set to start opening mid-September, The Arsonists not only welcomes an award-winning New York director to the City of Angels, it sets the L.A. theater scene on fire like nobody’s business.

Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. Through September 20. Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00. Saturdays at 5:00 and 8:00. Sundays at 2:00.
www.skylighttheatre.org/the-arsonists

–Steven Stanley
September 4, 2026
Photos: David Esquivel

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

Tags: Alistair Beaton, Los Angeles Theater Review, Max Frisch, Skylight Theatre, The Firebugs