Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Fearless, joyous, reptilian
Lizard Boy at Diversionary Theatre
Justin Huertas (foreground) and William A. Williams and Kirsten deLohr Helland (left to right)
Diversionary Theatre ushers in its 31st season with the San Diego premiere of Justin Huertas’s “comic book musical fantasy.”
Lizard Boy
- Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Boulevard, University Heights
- $15 - $50
Mt. St. Helens erupts and drama ensues. A dragon emerged from the lava. Its blood spews onto a group of schoolchildren. Trevor was one of the five infected. Justin Huertas plays the eponymous Trevor, a young man coping with his monstrosity. His skin is now green, scaly.
Trevor lives in self-imposed exile in his Seattle apartment. He draws and writes songs. One day a year, he returns to society and doesn’t have to worry about his skin. The occasion? MonsterFest at the Crocodile.
The talented Huertas not only “doubles” in this production. He septuples. He acts, sings, wrote the book and lyrics, plays cello, did the projections, and commands in this lively role. He created Lizard Boy because of the feeling of being left out. “I came into my acting career post-college,” he says in a note, “thinking I only have a shot at being cast as the quirky best friend or the plucky sidekick, but never the hero.”
Trevor is the hero in Huertas’s re-envisioning. Trevor’s sidekick Cary (William A. Williams) is a homely young guy he met on Grindr. After their initial meetings and faulty sexual come-ons, they are merely pals, despite the fact that the mobile phone app they met on is famous for gay hookups. “We met on my phone,” they admit, “but don’t have to bone.”
Trevor invited Carey to join him at the Crocodile and encourages him to don something for the Halloween-like MonsterFest. Carey dresses as an overgrown baby, replete with pajamas, massive pacifier, and fluffy slippers. Siren (Kirsten delohr Helland) wears red-hot tights, yellow-orange fur jacket, and dangerous stilettos. Like her Homeric namesakes, her songs enchant the young men. And Trevor recognizes her: a figure appearing in his dreams. He even sketched her. She’s one of the five with dragon’s blood. They must make a life-changing choice together.
The Diversionary production team deserves kudos for bringing this unconventional story to life. From the simple set design (Ron Logan) and the impeccable projections, to the pitch-perfect sounds (Matt Lescault-Wood), and the audience favorite strobe-lighting, slo-mo effect à la The Matrix (Curtis Mueller) everything goes off without a hitch. Cheers to Brandon Ivie for his superb direction.
“Pretending to be a curio,” Mary McCarthy wrote of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire, “it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century.” To apply this statement to Lizard Boy would be hyperbolic. But this coming-of-age, coming-out, indie-folksy rock-comic-book-infused musical is a sure sign that the American musical is as novelistic, vibrant, fearless, and joyous as ever.
Playing through October 30
Here's something you might be interested in.
Fearless, joyous, reptilian
Lizard Boy at Diversionary Theatre
Fearless, joyous, reptilian
Lizard Boy at Diversionary Theatre
Justin Huertas (foreground) and William A. Williams and Kirsten deLohr Helland (left to right)
Diversionary Theatre ushers in its 31st season with the San Diego premiere of Justin Huertas’s “comic book musical fantasy.”
Lizard Boy
- Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Boulevard, University Heights
- $15 - $50
Mt. St. Helens erupts and drama ensues. A dragon emerged from the lava. Its blood spews onto a group of schoolchildren. Trevor was one of the five infected. Justin Huertas plays the eponymous Trevor, a young man coping with his monstrosity. His skin is now green, scaly.
Trevor lives in self-imposed exile in his Seattle apartment. He draws and writes songs. One day a year, he returns to society and doesn’t have to worry about his skin. The occasion? MonsterFest at the Crocodile.
The talented Huertas not only “doubles” in this production. He septuples. He acts, sings, wrote the book and lyrics, plays cello, did the projections, and commands in this lively role. He created Lizard Boy because of the feeling of being left out. “I came into my acting career post-college,” he says in a note, “thinking I only have a shot at being cast as the quirky best friend or the plucky sidekick, but never the hero.”
Trevor is the hero in Huertas’s re-envisioning. Trevor’s sidekick Cary (William A. Williams) is a homely young guy he met on Grindr. After their initial meetings and faulty sexual come-ons, they are merely pals, despite the fact that the mobile phone app they met on is famous for gay hookups. “We met on my phone,” they admit, “but don’t have to bone.”
Trevor invited Carey to join him at the Crocodile and encourages him to don something for the Halloween-like MonsterFest. Carey dresses as an overgrown baby, replete with pajamas, massive pacifier, and fluffy slippers. Siren (Kirsten delohr Helland) wears red-hot tights, yellow-orange fur jacket, and dangerous stilettos. Like her Homeric namesakes, her songs enchant the young men. And Trevor recognizes her: a figure appearing in his dreams. He even sketched her. She’s one of the five with dragon’s blood. They must make a life-changing choice together.
The Diversionary production team deserves kudos for bringing this unconventional story to life. From the simple set design (Ron Logan) and the impeccable projections, to the pitch-perfect sounds (Matt Lescault-Wood), and the audience favorite strobe-lighting, slo-mo effect à la The Matrix (Curtis Mueller) everything goes off without a hitch. Cheers to Brandon Ivie for his superb direction.
“Pretending to be a curio,” Mary McCarthy wrote of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire, “it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century.” To apply this statement to Lizard Boy would be hyperbolic. But this coming-of-age, coming-out, indie-folksy rock-comic-book-infused musical is a sure sign that the American musical is as novelistic, vibrant, fearless, and joyous as ever.
Playing through October 30
Comments