Theater review by: Ethlie Ann Vare
Photos: Joe Coldize
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 2/7/26 – “People are more likely to be 100% real with someone they don’t know,” declares wannabe manic pixie dream girl Robbie. She is correct, as it turns out, and the realness leads to a smart, funny and sometimes touching 80-minute two-person one-act play that cleverly avoids becoming a standard-issue rom-com.
It’s 3am on Valentine’s Day night when a couple of strangers meet on a Queens subway platform. Each is cold and broke and alone and miserable because, after all, it is Valentine’s Day night and they’re cold and broke on a subway platform in Queens. Galen (Shaun Bedgood) is a strait-laced business type with some serious OCD issues. Robbie (Jenni Chiramonte) is dragging what appears to be an oxygen tank but turns out to be nitrous oxide she liberated from a dentist’s office. “Sweet air” is slang for recreational nitrous, apparently. News to me.
As the express trains stubbornly refuse to stop for them in this evocatively staged outer-borough subway station (I swear, I was ready to thread my keys between my knuckles), the pair establish a tentative rapport which leads to a fun, meandering conversation about everything from graffiti to Bollywood musicals. They get high a little and sing and dance a little, badly, but that’s not the point, and just let a happy audience at the little Hollywood theater eavesdrop on what they decide to call a Platon-Com, a meet-cute that leads to a refreshing platonic friendship.
Kudos in particular to the set designer (Miles Berman did lighting and sound, but I don’t know who came up with those perfect fake movie posters) and to director Katie Oliver, who also stepped up (ha!) as choreographer.
Sweet Air, written by playwright/stand-up comic Matt Morillo, got its start at last year’s Hollywood Fringe Fest. It is being remounted in time for a Valentine’s Day run and is a great option for the sweetheart you forgot to buy a gift for.
SWEET AIR
written by Matt Morillo
directed by Katie Oliver
produced by Ryan Whitlock
starring Shaun Bedgood, Jenni Chiramonte
McCadden Place Theatre
1157 N McCadden Place
through February 15
