‘Twilight’ and Los Angeles deserve more 30 years on

According to a recent (3/20/23) Suffolk University / Los Angeles Times poll, more than “half of Los Angeles residents said the [Los Angeles] police are generally fair, while about one-third said they are racist.” However, “Angelenos younger than 35 were more than twice as likely as those 55 and older to say that Los Angeles police are racist.” This means that older residents who lived through the Rodney King riots / unrest / civil disturbances, such as I, have a better view of the police than those who were in diapers when Rodney King and Reginald Denny were beaten on the streets of Los Angeles. Having worked with LAPD Wilshire Division Senior Lead Officer Joseph Pelayo on community issues, for example, I would say I was generally in agreement with this poll.

I mention this as context for the current revival of Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight: Los Angeles 1992” at the Mark Taper Forum to Sun., April 9 (Tickets at www. centertheatregroup.org or 213-628-2772).

In 1991, following her play about the Crown Heights riots in New York, the late Gordon Davidson, then artistic director of the Taper, invited Ms.

Smith to create a piece about Los Angeles, still raw from the post-King verdicts. The year before, the Taper had brought to life “The Kentucky Cycle” and “Angels in America,” and it then was known as a theater that created new work, rather than simply bus it in, as it mostly does now. Ms. Smith had the theater’s full support, interviewing more than 300 people, from Korean shop owners to Mr. Denny and Mr. King’s aunts, as well as luminaries such as Darryl Gates and Maxine Waters, for material.

The result was a time-capsule mosaic of post-trauma Los Angeles which went on to Broadway and regional theater acclaim, but which left some of us (myself included) less than satisfied, with its characterizations occasionally bordering on caricature and its oddly detached sensibility. Sylvie Drake, the Los Angeles Times drama critic, writing in her farewell column (12/26/93), looked back at the piece as both “non-committal” and “non-controversial,” chastising it for being theater “without an opinion.”

In 2021, Ms. Smith, then playwright-in-residence at New York’s Signature Theater, revised the play for five actors,

Theater Review by Louis Fantasia

editing and updating the script (in one monologue) to reflect the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement. This, with some additional editing and tweaking, is the version currently on stage at the Taper.

A first-rate cast of Los Angeles-based actors (Hugo Armstrong, Lovensky Jean-Baptiste, Lisa Reneé Pitts, Jeanne Sakata and Sabina Zúniga Varela) tackle the multiple roles with passion and aplomb. Under Gregg T. Daniel’s crisp direction, “Twilight” is transformed into a true ensemble piece reflecting our multicultural, multigenerational and multifaceted city. Reflecting on the changes to Los Angeles — and to Los Angeles theater — over the past 30 years, director Daniel noted in our recent conversation that he had “never seen such a fundamental change” as had happened over the last few years, as efforts to bring diver-

What to watch for

The Geffen hosts the second play about Ava Gardner this year in “Ava: The Secret Conversations,” April 4 through May 7 (310-208-5454; geffenplayhouse.com).

“Six,” the hi-octane musical about Henry VIII’s wives plays the Pantages, April 11 through June 11 (323468-1770; hollywoodpantages.com); while “1776” gets a multicultural makeover at the Ahmanson, April 11 through May 7 (213-628-2772; centertheatregroup.org).

The Pasadena Playhouse rounds out its Sondheim-fest with “A Little Night Music,” April 25 through May 28 (626356-7529; www.pasadenaplayhouse.org).

sity and inclusion have helped to “dismantle the citadel” of whose stories get told on stage.

As for the local cast and creative team for “Twilight,” the resonances of the play were visceral and personal, “part of their DNA,” he told me, adding that this was not a “distant, dormant” museum piece.

No, but it still strikes me as a piece that pulls its punches, especially here in Los Angeles. Why remount the 2021 New York version? Why not interview locals 30 years on? Why not discuss how far (or not) the Korean community has come or the recent, racist City Council tapes of Latino leaders, or the fact that Black police officers were responsible for the death of Tyre Nichols?

Los Angeles is the city that gave birth to this work and to much of the debate and discussion on race in America, and we deserve more than just another regional theater revival.

As produced, “Twilight: Los Angeles 1992” is not a museum piece, but, after 30 years — like Los Angeles itself — it is not quite what it could be, either.

Magician Shine at El Portal March 31

Having amazed audiences for decades, magician Bernie Shine of Hancock Park returns Fri., March 31, to the El Portal Theatre, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Get ready to be entertained with mentalism, telepathy and precision slight-of-hand. For $40 tickets to the 8 p.m. show, visit elportaltheatre. com/bernieshine.html.