Disposable Necessities

Cienfuegos’ staging is confidently sure-footed as he handles the show’s iconoclastic outcomes, aided by a company of five swift actors clearly having a ball. They and the play will delight you. Every note struck is the right one. The setting by David Mauer is kept simple, Christopher Moscatiello’s sound is strong and clear, Christine Cover Ferro’s costumes fit the occasion beautifully.

As nifty as the production values are, Disposable Necessities doesn't really need them. McGowan's work is every bit a think play...

With Disposable Necessities, Rogue Machine once again establishes itself as a company that hits far more often than it misses.

Director Cienfuegos allows McGowan's well-written humor to keep us laughing at the absurdity of the situation as well as ourselves, contemplating our own reasons to want to live forever while wondering what such changes would mean to the rest of the world.

...The hi-tech conceit of Neil McGowan’s Brave New World (as Aldous Huxley entitled his somewhat similarly themed 1931 sci fi classic) is that 75 years from now a digitized version of the inner self of individuals can be downloaded into the bodies of recently deceased people called “modules.” So theoretically, one’s mind, spirit, etc., can be periodically transferred into younger, healthier sets of “meat and bones,” as one character says, while the older, sicker cadaver is cashiered. In this manner – similar to downloading an app for a rideshare service – eternal youth is possible for Homo sapiens.

In a fictional land of the future created by playwright Neil McGowan in his astonishing new play, Disposable Necessities, the wealthy can dispose of their bodies and occupy new ones through a company that has developed the ability to extract, at enormous cost, the conscious soul of a person and put it into whatever body they choose to buy. So, for example, the old can refresh themselves with young bodies. A woman can become a man, and vice versa. They can change bodies for the sport of it. They can do this multiple times, theoretically forever.

The entire production team does a creditable job of creating a “Brave New World” for its characters. But make no mistake: it is the cunning introduction of this fascinating new world which keeps the audience focused. For better or worse, it doesn’t take too much imagination to see that our twenty-first century digital age could easily go in author McGowan’s direction. Science fiction buffs will love this comic tale – but it will also appeal to people who love to uncover layers of meaning – and who want to be entertained while doing it.

Director Guillermo Cienfuegos and a lively cast tear into their material with brio. As women play men, and vice versa, the actors could be accused of occasionally slipping into caricature, but what matter? They serve the piece’s comic rhythms and nail down the laughs — or, conversely, the pathos.

Arriving precisely when virtually all L.A. theater comes to a Christmas halt, Disposable Necessities is everything the die-hard theatergoer could wish for this time of the year. That it’s something well worth seeing no matter the season is icing on the cake.

Director Guillermo Cienfuegos gets strong work from his actors, but the play’s first act is weighed down with a lot of exposition while some of its science fiction trappings (a virtual internet, earpod-type phones you can’t see) are less convincing than they might be. On the other hand, McGowan’s writing is sharp and humorous and creative, and the moral questions he poses in the second act are intriguing if somewhat theoretical.

Thought provoking and well done for what it is, it's up to the audience to decide if a trip to LFI might be an answer. Whom would you be next?

There's some diabolical stuff going on in this play, and it's so much fun. The show's got shocks, laughs, and it leaves you with something to think about after you've left the theater. Fans of science fiction, this is not the show to miss.