Conundrum Theatre Company hits a bullseye with Falsettos, William Finn and James Lapine’s richly rewarding look back at a freshly out gay New Yorker’s life in the years before and just after the AIDS epidemic began to wreak havoc on his city.

A mash-up of 1981’s March Of The Falsettos and its 1990 follow-up Falsettoland as a single Tony-winning 1992 Broadway two-acter, Falsettos introduces us to 30something professional Marvin (Michael Vandie), who’s left his wife Trina (Morgan Meadows) for a hot young thing named Whizzer (Danny Holmberg), news which has sent Trina to see psychiatrist Mendel (Jack Rogers), who also counsels Marvin and the couple’s tween son Jason (Dylan van Halle).

Set ten years after Stonewall and two years before the New York Native published the first reports of a “gay cancer” in an article ironically headlined “Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded,” Act One’s March Of The Falsettos is the kind of bouncy, tuneful, flashy, funny, and occasionally quite touching look at a Gay-Liberated man and his extended family you might expect from a time when AIDS had not yet reared its ugly head.

Written a decade later, Falsettoland turns considerably darker (hardly surprising given its AIDS=Death time frame) while retaining much of the first act’s humor … and adding a couple of next-door neighbors (Myia LaShaun as Cordelia and Katelyn Coon as Dr. Charlotte) for lesbian pizzazz.

Some have complained of a disconnect between Falsetto’s two acts, and though the resulting full-length musical does at times feel like two different shows stuck together, it’s precisely this “disconnect” that gives the hybrid of March Of The Falsettos and Falsettoland so much of its power.

Act One’s affectionate recollection of a time when a case of the clap was about the worst thing that sex could bestow on a gay man reflects the naïve optimism of the ‘70s, a decade during which the scourge of AIDS could hardly have been imagined by any of its characters.

The characters in Act Two are no longer clueless.

Together the two acts make for as impactful a musical as Broadway has ever delivered, filled with so much heart and soul and humor and love that it becomes something quite extraordinary indeed.

Entirely sung-through, Falsettos features Finn’s quirky Tony-winning words and music alongside some of the most gorgeous ballads you’ll swoon and cry over anytime soon and a Tony-winning book (basically a sequencing of the show’s 3-dozen songs) by Finn and James Lapine that is as funny as it is gut-wrenching.

Director Jack Filsinger makes inventive use of Matthew Namik’s set (essentially furniture arranged to represent a dining area and psychiatrist’s office around an otherwise bare blackbox stage with musical director Jonathan Kretchmer and his tiptop “teeny tiny band” seated upstage left).

Add to that a striking lighting design, Em Frank’s array of late-’70s-early-’80s-evoking costumes, and a sound design that provides a crystal-clear mix of instrumentals and amped vocals and you’ve got a production design that works even minus big-bucks frills.

Still, if there’s anything you’ll be raving about to friends after catching Falsettos during its too-short two-weekend run, it’s the sensational septet of performers who bring this funny-bone-tickling, heartstrings-tugging musical to vibrant, affecting life under Filsinger’s incisive direction.

Vandie makes a memorable debut as a Jewish-American everymensch we can’t help but root for despite the wrench he puts in what had been a pretty much perfect family up till now; Rogers turns Dr. Mendel into as loveable a teddy bear of a psychiatrist-husband-stepfather as any patient, wife, or stepson could wish for; von Halle makes for a Jason as awkwardly charming as he is real; and though we have to wait till Act Two for LaShaun and Coon to show up as the two most adorably feisty lesbians in town, their arrival is worth the wait.

Most memorable of all are Wisteria Theatre favorites Meadows and Holmberg, the former of whom has redheaded stunner Trina doing her frazzled frantic best to survive (and stopping the show with a dazzler of an “I’m Breaking Down”) while an absolutely revelatory Holmberg not only gives Whizzer sexy twink appeal, he digs deep into a man far too young to have to face his fate.

(Did I mention that all seven have the vocal prowess to master Finn’s tricky melodies?)

Last but not least, Kylie Buckles-Hall’s choreography is especially sparkly in “Four Jews In A Room Bitching” and the quirktastic “March Of The Falsettos,” and Buckles-Hall earns bonus points for the passionate romantic tug-of-war that is Vandie’s and Holmberg’s “The Thrill Of First Love.”

Falsettos is produced by Bryan Snodgrass. Kretchmer, Phil Feather, Scot Sexton, and Vicente Ditto make up the show’s four-piece band. Omari Miller, Anna C. Christie, and Jason Miserlis are swings. Brooklyn Younkin is stage manager and Samuel Kort is sub stage manager.

Seeing the original Broadway cast of Falsettos when it first played Los Angeles in 1994 was probably the most life-changing experience I’ve ever had in a theater, and I’ve jumped at every rare chance I’ve had to see it since then.

Conundrum’s Falsettos may lack the star power that Max von Essen and Eden Espinosa brought to the Ahmanson Theatre seven years ago and its budget may be a teeny-tiny fraction of that Broadway revival’s, but it doesn’t stint an iota where talent and emotional impact is concerned.

Victory Theatre Center – 3326 W Victory Blvd, Burbank. Through October 25. Fridays at 8:00, Saturdays at 2:00 and 8:00, Sundays at 2:00.
www.conundrumtheatreco.com

–Steven Stanley
October 16, 2026

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

Tags: Conundrum Theatre Company, James Lapine, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Victory Theatre Center, William Finn