Laughter and fears go hand in hand at Thanksgiving dinner in Stephen Karam’s justifiably honored Best Play Tony-winner The Humans, now playing at the Ahmanson with its Tony-winning stars Jayne Howdyshell and Reed Birney (and all but one of its original Broadway ensemble members) intact.

The November holiday provides precisely the right opportunity for Richard (Nick Mills) and Brigid (Sarah Steele) to invite the latter’s family over for a housewarming/holiday meal in the Chinatown, New York duplex the cohabitating young unmarrieds have recently begun to call home.

 Not that Brigid’s 60something blue-collar Catholic parents Erik (Birney) and Deirdre Blake (Howdyshell) are all that excited about returning to the city his mother “Momo” (Lauren Klein) fled decades earlier for a better life in Scranton, PA, and even less so given Richard and Brigid’s decision not to tie the marital knot, thereby mimicking older daughter Aimee (Cassie Beck), who might still be coupled if only she and Carol had walked down the aisle.

On the surface, at least, things seem to be going well for the Blakes. Richard has worked in maintenance at a Catholic high school for nearly three decades, Deirdre’s been office manager for the same company since right out of high school, and Aimee’s lawyering for a high-power firm.

As for Brigid and Richard, though the younger Blake has been bartending nights to make ends met, her music degree offers prospects of higher-paying employment ahead, and her twelve-years-older significant other, though still in grad school at thirty-eight, seems not to be hurting for cash.

 The nightmares that Erik has been having lately are the first indication that all is not as well chez the Blakes as it might at first seem, though whether his dreams are due to caring for a wheelchair-bound mother in advanced stages of Alzheimer’s or something more alarming, only Erik knows for sure.

 Playwright Karam, whose gift for mixing the comedic with life’s darker shades was previously made evident in Speech And Debate and Sons Of The Prophet, hits new heights in The Humans. (The title, at first a seeming nod to the universality of its very specific characters, acquires new meaning when Richard recalls his childhood love of a comic book whose “half-alien, half-demon creatures” told horror stories, not about monsters like themselves, but about humans.)

Karam’s characters inhabit their own planet of horrors, one where decades of hard work or years invested in a relationship don’t necessarily pay off and what lies ahead may be as real as Momo’s dementia or as surreal as the darkness lurking at the bottom of the stairs for one of its protagonists.

Still, somber as The Humans can get, audiences can expect plenty of laughs for their Ahmanson bucks, in addition to the chance to see the extraordinary Howdyshell and Birney make abundantly clear why Tony voters singled them out.

 Under Joe Mantello’s Tony-nominated direction, original cast members Beck, Klein, and Steele and original company member Mills do their own memorable, multi-shaded work as well on David Zinn’s deliberately uninviting Tony-winning two-story ground-floor/basement set (expanded from its original off-Broadway incarnation, pictured here), a design that keeps everyone somewhere onstage throughout except for deliberate instances when Karam has them hiding from view.

Add to this Justin Townsend’s Tony-nominated lighting, alternately stark and foreboding, Fitz Patton’s powerful sound design mix of the real and the surreal, and Sarah Laux’s character-perfect costumes and you’ve got a production design that has proven well worth importing from New York to L.A.

Casting is by Carrie Gardner, CSA.  Denise Lute, Suzanne Marley, Dale Place, Therese Plaehn, and Luis Vega are understudies.

William Joseph Barnes is production supervisor.  Brian J. L’Ecuyer is production stage manager.  Denny Daniello is company manager.

As its title might suggest, one need merely be human to recognize oneself at least somewhere among the characters of Stephen Karam’s latest (and greatest) play. Funny, thought-provoking, heartbreaking, button-pushing, and unsettling, The Humans is an early-summer must-see.

Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N Grand Ave, Los Angeles.
www.CenterTheatreGroup.org

–Steven Stanley
June 26, 2018
Photos: Joan Marcus, Lawrence H. Ho

Tags: Ahmanson Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles Theater Review, Stephen Karam