THE HUMANS, Stephen Karam’s 2016 Tony Award-winning Best Play, garnered the most ecstatic and well-deserved reviews of any Broadway play in recent memory. To make the last stop on the show’s national tour even more special for Los Angeles audiences, Center Theatre Group is presenting this slice-of-life tale at the Ahmanson Theatre through July 29, led by two-time Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello, with Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell reprising their Tony Award-winning performances as the leads, Erik and Deirdre Blake. The entire 6-person cast also includes previous Broadway company members Cassie Beck, Lauren Klein, Nick Mills and Sarah Steele.
To make the production even more spectacular, the entire creative team of the Broadway production has returned for the national tour, including Tony Award-winning scenic designer David Zinn, costume designer Sarah Laux, Tony Award-nominated lighting designer Justin Townsend and Drama Desk Award-winning sound designer Fitz Patton.
Their brilliance is on display from the moment you walk inside the theater, given the attention-grabbing, double-level set where the story of an everyday family dealing with modern-day trials and tribulations is about to take place.
The angst, anguish, and amity of the American middle class are first coaxed, then shoved, into the light in this uproarious, hopeful and heartbreaking play that takes place over the course of a family dinner on Thanksgiving. Breaking with tradition, Erik Blake (Birney) has brought his Pennsylvania family to celebrate and give thanks at his daughter’s apartment in the Chinatown section of lower Manhattan.
As darkness falls outside the ramshackle pre-war duplex, and eerie things start to go bump in the night, the Blake clan’s deepest fears and greatest follies are laid bare. And in the course of the next 100 minutes, our modern age of anxiety is keenly observed, with humor and compassion, in this new American classic.
No doubt you will see elements of your own family life in “The Humans,” given how realistically Karam has written his characters, which include the long-wed and financially struggling older married couple Erik and Deidre Blake; his elderly, dementia-suffering, wheelchair-bound “Momo” (Lauren Klein); their older daughter Aimee (Cassie Beck), a successful lawyer whose colitis has been kicked into high gear after the break-up with her lesbian lover; and younger daughter Brigid (Sarah Steele) who has just moved into a new apartment with her live-in boyfriend Richard Saad (Nick Mills) much to the chagrin of her parents who continuously push for them to marry.
So as you can imagine, this Thanksgiving dinner will involve not only food served on paper plates at a card table with folding chairs, but many trips up and down a winding staircase at stage right to the bathroom on the upper level of the apartment, down-the-hall elevator rides between floors to allow Momo to be with the rest of the family as they switch floors, loud noises emanating from a disgruntled neighbor, and several confrontational moments as traditions are shared and truths are revealed.
Director Mantello keeps the action, conflicts, concerns and ultimate deep caring flowing from moment to moment, so much so that is easy to understand how panicked Brigid was at the prospect of hosting them all together for the evening. Even the lack of a roll of toilet paper becomes an issue for the entire family, as well it should!
If you never get a chance to see a Tony Award-winning show on Broadway, now is your chance to experience the wonder such a brilliant production creates for an audience to experience bits of their own lives so realistically on the stage.
“The Humans” continues through July 29 at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre at The Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. Performances daily except Mondays, with no 8 pm show on Wednesday, July 4 to allow for family celebrations and fireworks to take place elsewhere. Note, this play is performed without an intermission and due to adult language and situations, not appropriate for younger audiences. Tickets are priced from $30 to $130, available online at www.CenterTheatreGroup.org, by calling Center Theatre Group Audience Services at 213-972-4400, or in person at the Center Theatre Group Box Office at The Ahmanson Theatre.