A Matrix Double Header? Two Fab Four-handers About That “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”

Currently playing upstairs in the Henry Murray Stage and downstairs on the mainstage at the Matrix Theatre, two delightful romances featuring superb performances and sparkling dialogue are being mounted. Melissa Ross’ two-act Nice Girl is being presented by Rogue Machine Theatre at the former, starring Anaïs Fairweather, who delivers a remarkably nuanced, naturalistic, totally convincing performance as the title character, Jo. Suddenly, the onetime Radcliffe student has turned around to find herself pushing 40, and still living at home in the Boston suburbs with her stifling if well-meaning mother, Francine (award winning comic Susan Peahl), during the Reagan era.

With a cunning combination of guile, guilt and maternalism, following the long-ago death of her husband, Francine connived for her daughter to permanently drop out of college to take care of her. Exploiting Jo’s deathbed promise to her late father, Francine has narrowed Jo’s world, stunting her growth and sexuality. Being “nice” is strangling Jo, who yearns to break out of her shell, with the help of two people.

Initially, Jo’s brash co-worker Sherry (Bailey Humiston) comes across like a games- playing airhead, but Humiston’s performance wins one over, as she unveils and reveals levels of Sherry’s personality as a fundamentally good-hearted person trying to find happiness in a complicated world. In doing so, Sherry helps her fellow secretary, the spinster-ish Jo, to open herself up, taking her to discos, giving her style tips and being an all-around morale booster.

A former classmate, Donny (Jeff Lorch, who was so outstanding as a pro-IRA sniper in the hard-hitting drama Corktown ’39), reenters Jo’s life just as the twentieth anniversary reunion party of their high school graduation nears. Donny is a butcher, and his character is reminiscent of Ernest Borgnine’s Academy Award-winning role as the salt of the Earth blue collar character in 1955’s Marty, which also snagged the Best Picture Oscar plus two others, for screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and for director Delbert Mann. But there’s more to Donny than meets the eye, and I didn’t see a plot twist (that’s a real twister!) coming that took me totally by surprise.

It didn’t occur to me until the second act, when Jo’s last name – Rosen – is mentioned to realize that she’s a nice Jewishgirl, one of the many surprises in this exceedingly well-acted, well-written two-act play. Anaïs Fairweather, who also played Supergirl in the DC Super Hero Girls animated series, is simply super as Jo. She’s not unlike Betsy Blair’s character who comes to life opposite Borgnine’s meat chopper in Marty.

Barbara Kallir’s light design seamlessly transports us from Jo’s house to a discotheque during that era when disco was all the rage. Ann Bronston, a veteran actress herself, deftly, delicately directs her cast to turn in subtle, poignant performances that are true to life, with all its messiness and glories. And if you listen closely, you’ll hear that Jane Fonda, that inspirational emblem of liberation, “co-stars” in Nice Girl.

This beautiful play reminds us that being “nice” doesn’t have to mean being passive and letting people take advantage of you; one can be considerate to others while still living your best life. That is, if you’re truly nice to your inner self, the you that is you inside.

The Matrix’s other play on the boards of its mainstage is Outside Mullingar, presented by The 6th Act and penned by John Patrick Shanley, who won the Academy Award in the Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen category for 1987’s Moonstruck and was Oscar-nominated for adapting 2008’s Doubt. Like Nice Girl, this is a romance, but one set across the Atlantic in Ireland near the village of Mullingar. Shanley has instilled his one-act play with a strong Irish sensibility, which was unfamiliar and thus enticing to this reviewer, who was only romantically involved with one Irish woman in his life. (Imagine my surprise when her name – which I suppose is pretty common in County Cork and parts thereabouts – was mentioned in the dialogue: Mary O’Connor. I hadn’t thought of her for years.)

Taking place in the countryside, Outside Mullingar expresses the struggle for and connectedness of the Irish with land. The characters are all next-door neighbors and of two different generations. Tony Reilly (veteran thespian Armin Shimerman, who has heaps of stage and big/little screen credits, such as Quark on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and as Principal Snyder in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) plays the quirky father of the much put upon Anthony Reilly (Michael Kirby).

Aoife Muldoon (played by another screen/stage stalwart, Kitty Swink), is the mother of Rosemary Muldoon (Liza Seneca, a member of The Antaeus Company and co-artistic director of The 6th Act). While Tony and Aoife are elders (and offstage, Shimerman and Swink, are actually married, which adds to the onstage fun), the neighbor’s offspring are 40-ish.

Rosemary and Anthony are also unmarried, and there’s an unacknowledged frisson between them that lays dormant. Having grown up together has inhibited any expression of desire for one another, which could seem incestuous (although they’re not related to one another by blood). Anthony also mentions several times that they attend the same church, as if this renders any romantic inclinations between them improper. Although Shanley’s script doesn’t go into it, I imagine that a heavy dose of Catholic repression has also complicated matters for these two.

Will they or won’t they do it? is at the heart of this play. Along with whether or not Anthony will inherit the farm that’s been owned by his family for generations, and bestows that sense of rootedness Indigenous people feel with the soil. Along the way, finding out what happens is lots of fun in this poetic, semi-mystical Irish milieu, full of twists and turns.

The acting is top notch. Ms. Seneca is a tall, blonde beauty with an aquiline profile and watching her reach the end of her tether in the heather is truly a sight to behold. Although about 42, Anthony has a little boy lost quality about him that beguiles and exasperates long suffering Rosemary. Shimerman has a sparkle in his eyes that shimmers and a touch of the blarney; his deathbed confession is genuinely moving. There is some drinking and soulful singing – this is Ireland, after all.

And this is the third Irish play I’ve seen recently, including the abovementioned tragedy Corktown ’39, which was also presented (by Rogue Machine) on the Matrix’s mainstage, with a set designed by Mark Mendelson. He has rather remarkably also rendered a completely different scenic design for Outside Mullingar, which has moving components and completely transforms the space. It’s hard to believe I saw both plays on the same exact stage.

The 6th Act’s Co-Artistic Director Matthew Leavitt adroitly, artistically helms this production, drawing finely etched portraits from each member of the ensemble, as if their performances have been painted and engraved by Albrecht Dürer. I spontaneously saw Outside Mullingar at the last minute and am eternally grateful that I did, congratulating myself on having – well – the luck of the Irish. Begorra and bravo!

Rogue Machine presents Nice Girl at 8:00 p.m. on Mondays and Fridays; 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays through July 20 at the Matrix Theatre upstairs in The Henry Murray Stage. For reservations call ​(855)585-5185 or here.

The 6th Act presents Outside Mullingar Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8: 00 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. (no show on Sunday June 15) through June 22 on the mainstage at the Matrix Theatre. For tickets, go here.

Both plays are at the Matrix Theatre, at 7657 Melrose Avenue, L.A., California, 90048.

May your humble scribe make a recommendation? Why not do as I did and make a day/ night of it? On Saturdays and Sundays, ticket buyers can enjoy a double feature of live theater under the same roof through June 22. (If you take my suggestion, bear in mind that each play requires a separate admission.)

ALOHA OE (farewell to thee), Joel Zuker, our beloved cinema professor and head of the Film Program at Hunter College, who has, alas, gone to that great screening room in the sky.