One thing we can say for certain about June is that she’s all about two things — sleuthing in the streets, and murder in the sheets.
This may be an overly simplistic summation of the world premiere of “Happy Pleasant Valley: A Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical” at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, co-produced with Center Repertory Company. Inside that killer title awaits a musical offering more future potential than present delight, with a grand assembly of massively murderous Bay Area talents ready to get freaky and start slayin.’
Jade (Sophie Oda) is not unlike many influencers that mine the interwebs for clicks and engagement, and certainly not unlike many who have gotten themselves canceled for bad behavior. This time, it’s a hot camera picking up some ageist remarks after a live shot ends. Within seconds, the “Jade Brigade” goes poof.
But as luck would have it, a chance for Jade to prove she’s down for the elders comes in the form of saving her grandmother June (Emily Kuroda), who’s being removed from her San Mateo senior housing unit for lovemaking skills that, shall we say, massacre on the mattress?
When Jade arrives with loyal Dean (Miller Liberatore) to scope out the situation, lots of sexual energy awaits, a bevy of seniors with fully activated libidos. These folks include the squirrel-loving Vicki (Lucinda Hitchcock Cone), on-the-prowl Bernice (Jacqueline De Muro), who loves to bag young 55-ers, and the charming and supportive DeeDee (Cindy Goldfield), whose all for her husband Mort (Danny Scheie) embracing his late-stage bisexuality.
The woman who brings the funk to the home is June, who has become something of a persona non grata in the community, a resident believed to snatch up the ground-round, top-choice meat and keep it for herself.
Min Kahng, a triple threat who handled the book, music and lyrics, makes good use of his talents, a composer who can work in witty lyrics that include plenty of zingers, providing effusive humanity inside a story of senior sexual liberation. Jeffrey Lo’s direction has its own sharpness, especially in a snappy first act that cleanly focuses its lens, assisted mightily by the glitzy projections design by the late David Lee Cuthbert and Tasi Alabastro’s projections content creation.
While Act 1 does its due to establish a world of colorful characters blessed with oodles of quaint quirk, act two gets murky and decelerates, faltering as it attempts to fuse two distinct stories inside one narrative. There is much to compel surrounding the commentary around influencer culture and the harm that society places on those flashes in the pan who know how to use CapCut, there’s also a murder mystery and family drama that trudges towards its denouement without the panache needed to arrive there.
Despite the show feeling as if there is still room to develop along with a healthy chop to its 155-minute runtime, what cannot be denied are the delightful characterizations that Kahng’s mind has built, and the pillars of Bay Area acting talent that Lo assembles and disseminates all over the stage, the mom jean budget for Jill C. Bowers’ joyous costumes proving to be quite plentiful.
Kuroda is tasked with carrying the load on her shoulders and delivers, singing and dancing with exhausting verve while dipping into the emotional demands of a character atoning inside her long life. Goldfield is instantly likable as Mort’s better half, urging massive guffaws in some of Kahng’s best characterizations: Cone’s subplot regarding a squirrel builds a duality of both charm and melancholia, Cone’s Vicki finding the humor inside the aging process which faces us all. And Scheie is a master of surprises, a performer ready with a yelp or a bellow who is missed when not immediately in front of an audience.
Oda is a revelatory young acting and vocal talent, commanding the stage inside a masterful performance, the truth of Jade’s personal persona an interesting dichotomy from how the public knows her. Liberatore’s puppy dog attention as loyalite Dean compels, yearning to hold Jade’s kiss and not just her camera.
“Happy Pleasant Valley” isn’t there yet, but certainly feels like it’s on the way towards something grand, that rare musical which centers on older characters who aren’t simply present to comment on the kids in that “We’re old now and we know better” kind of way. Heck, there may even be a Happy Pleasant Valley franchise on the horizon.
Because if we can’t get “Happy Pleasant Valley 2: Mort’s Revenge” on a stage someday, what was the point of all this anyway?
David John Chávez is chair of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (‘22-‘23); @davidjchavez.bsky.social.
‘HAPPY PLEASANT VALLEY: A SENIOR SEX SCANDAL MURDER MYSTERY MUSICAL’
By Min Kahng, presented by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
Through: March 30
Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
Tickets: $34-$115; theatreworks.org
Dates: June 1 – 29
Where: Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek
Tickets: $66 – $95; centerrep.org