Playwright Joy Gregory manages to find both humor and heart amidst the hatred spewed by Topeka, Kansas’s infamous Westboro Baptist Church in her captivating and compelling new play Saint Megan, another stunning Rogue Machine Theatre World Premiere.

If Westboro Baptist doesn’t ring a bell, think back to images you may have seen a dozen or so years ago in the LA Times or flashed on the TV news of protesters outside military funerals carrying picket signs proclaiming “GOD HATES FAGS” and “THANK GOD FOR DEAD SOLDIERS.”

As to who exactly these protesters were, well they were most likely related to church founder Fred Phelps, among them his 50ish lawyer daughter Shirley (Rachel Sorsa) and Shirley’s teenaged daughters Grace (Meg Cain), Bekah (Cordelia Leigh), and the titular Megan (Caitlin Zambito), the church’s most vocal online advocate.

It’s on Twitter that Megan first makes the virtual acquaintance of Chad (Zack Rocklin-Waltch), aka “Jewlicious,” who makes it his personal mission to tweet some sense into Megan’s by-the-Bible-verse noggin.

Why, for instance, does she cherry-pick only those passages that suit her church’s hateful homophobic message? If she had studied the Bible’s origins as he has, she would realize that the Ancient Greek word arsenokoitai wasn’t translated as “homosexual” until 1946 and maybe rethink her conviction that “God hates gay sex.”

Chad’s questions soon have Megan’s still developing 17-year-old brain wondering precisely why the Phelpses are doing all this picketing. If people are either already condemned from birth like her excommunicated brother Josh or they’re not, what exactly are she and her family changing?

The story Saint Megan has to tell could easily fill a multi-episode limited series, yet playwright Gregory manages to fit it all into eighty lively minutes, including a couple of music video-style song-and-dance numbers with bouncy choreography by Emmy Frevele and new lyrics to match the Westboro Church’s core message. (Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” now has the Phelps teens rocking out to “Wha-wha-wha did you say you think God loves your praying. He hates all you do ‘cause you love fornicating. F-fornicating. F-fornicating.”)

Not only that, but hateful as the messages these teen girls keep spewing may be, Gregory understands that these are in many ways typical American teenagers and manages to mine laughs from their girlish innocence and glee.

Director Lina Patel brings out the best in Gregory’s script, one that weaves in a quintet of late 18th-century Shaker women whose ubiquitous presence keeps an audience guessing, and elicits one memorable performance after another.

The always stunning Sorsa follows her recent solo triumph at the Ruskin Group Theatre by managing to create a three-dimensional daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother out of a woman who equates hatred with love, even if it means mentally killing off half of her children so far.

The radiant Cain and the bubbly Leigh bring to vibrant life two very different sisters, one beginning to question what the other blindly believes, and Shannon Lee Clair is terrific too as both Chad’s pre-med undergrad girlfriend and a PhD Candidate in Religious Studies hoping to interview Shirley for her dissertation.

A fabulous Rocklin-Waltch, meanwhile, creates three distinctly different characters, a no-nonsense cop, an on-his-way-to-gay Phelps sibling, and the sexy intellectual charmer who proves himself not only Megan most worthy adversary but a possible love interest as well.

Most unforgettable of all is the absolutely astonishing Zambito, who does more with just her eyes than most actresses could do with a thousand words in a performance that has us both rooting for Megan even as she spouts the vilest possible interpretation of scripture and invested in a relationship that develops without either participant ever making eye contact.

Scenic designer Amanda Knehans makes expressive use of the expansive Matrix stage in a production also blessed by the design gifts of Azra King-Abadi (lighting), Christopher Moscatiello (music direction and sound), Christine Cover Ferro (costumes), Tony Valdés (wigs), Nicole Bernardini (props), and Ned Mochel (fight coordinator and choreographer).

Saint Megan is produced by Justin Okin and Betsy Zajko. Emily Jerez is associate producer. Grant Gerrard is technical director. Casting is by Victoria Hoffman. Judith Borne is publicist.

It takes talent and chutzpah to somehow humanize characters that at first glance seem the very antithesis of human. Joy Gregory does just that in Saint Megan, the latest triumph from L.A.’s Rogue Machine Theatre.

Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles. Through November 15. Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 3:00.
www.roguemachinetheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
October 17, 2026
Photos: Jeff Lorch

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

Tags: Joy Gregory, Los Angeles Theater Review, Matrix Theatre, Rogue Machine Theatre