[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of The Road Theatre Company’s world premiere of LIFELINE, written by Robert Axelrod and directed by Ken Sawyer.
Lifeline is the second show of The Road’s 2025/26 season and they have once again pushed their own boundaries and created something completely original both in content and execution.
Set in a training course for an LGBTQ suicide hotline, Lifeline introduces us to a delightful group of people with as many different reasons to be there as anyone could possibly imagine. The course is led by two veterans of the Lifeline organisation, Jen and Drew. Jen seems to have taken some time off recently, and this is her first session back. Between them, they have the training down pat, with their own sweet, inclusive white bread patter.
The group of would-be hotline helpers is mostly LGBTQ, and so have their own very personal connection to this world. But one trainee, Patti, is something of an outlier. In her 50s, she is by far the oldest, and while it is clear to the audience why perhaps everyone else is here, she is a bit of a mystery.
The entire play is set in the offices of the Lifeline organization, with a small kitchen area for snacks and a large whiteboard for instruction.
There is also the truly magical addition of a phenomenally talented troubadour, seemingly invisible to the cast whose lilting guitar and gorgeous voice lift the story and dazzle the audience in moments that deserve some time for us to truly contemplate what we have witnessed. Not a break from the play, but a pause for thinking. It’s dazzling and revelatory and strangely fits perfectly into what otherwise is a fairly traditionally wrought play.
The staging is not traditional, though. It is, however, absolutely magical. The Road stage is remarkably flexible, I have seen it in so many different configurations over the many years I have attended plays there, and they always manage the transformations incredibly well. You really never know what to expect from one play to the next and it creates a space that is thoughtfully dynamic.
But for Lifeline, they really have outdone themselves. The stage is extended right up to the audience. Some of the audience is actually seated onstage, in fact, and not in a last minute oh my god, where are we going to put these people way. These seats are amongst the trainees. They are actually serving as extras in a way. And the effect of this very clever move is to bring all of us into the action. We watch our fellow audience members experience the play as we also experience it, but for once, we can see their faces as if they were our own. Each laugh, each gasp, each shadow of sadness is shared with us and shown to us. It’s almost like watching the play in 4D! I have seen plays with audience participation before, but this is not that. We are all still observers, just more intimately invited ones.
All that aside, the story of these beautifully written and extraordinarily acted characters is tenderly powerful. As the days progress through this two-week training period, each of them unfolds flower-like, showing us their beauty and their vulnerability and their purpose. Even the tightly closed Sarah Beth, an autistic young woman full of anxiety and self doubt, shares her own fears as she learns how to allay the fears of others.
Every carefully drawn character has a story and each of them is wonderfully realized with performances full of pathos and nuance and heart. Everyone is absolutely wonderful in their parts. They play with their characters as they play their roles, and it’s as if we are one of them, following their bliss, finding themselves, understanding their own stories and how they brought them here to heal as they help.
Lifeline is an absolutely brilliant and totally unpretentious vision of this carefully curated space that handles life and death on an hourly basis. It is a beautifully crafted and extraordinarily executed piece of heartfelt theatre.
We fall in love with these people, we yearn to reach out and hold them as they unburden and slightly unravel in front of us. Clever and heartbreaking, joyful and hopeful and completely unforgettable. Lifeline is exactly what it says it is. And I cannot tell you how deeply I and many of us in the audience needed all the genuine benevolence that resonates from simple acts of care. It’s tough out there right now. We need each other more than ever, we need to know that there are people sitting in a room somewhere, just in case someone needs to call and ask for help.
If you are in need of a reminder that almost all humans are instinctively and fundamentally good… here it is. Bravo to all and thank you!
Tickets:
https://ci.ovationtix.com/35065/production/1258741
When:
January 23 – Sunday, March 14, 2026
Performances are Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm; Sundays at 2pm
There will be two captioned performances for the deaf and hard of hearing communities on Saturday, February 7 and Sunday, February 22.
Where:
The Road Theatre is located in the NoHo Senior Arts Colony
10747 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91601
The Cast
The cast of LIFELINE will feature: Brittany Visser as “Jen,” Tommy Dickie as “Drew,” Amy Tolsky as “Patti,” Clifton J. Adams as “Kai, Naomi Rubin as “Sarah Beth” and Xoë Sazzle as “Maya.” Musicians for LIFELINE are Joh Chase and Lou Roy.
The Team
The Design Team for LIFELINE is as follows: Scenic Design by Desma Murphy; Lighting Design by Matthew Richter; Projection Design by Nicholas Santiago; Sound Design by Ken Sawyer; Costume Design by Mary Jane Miller; Properties Design by Aaron Lyons. Original Music by Joh Chase. The Production Stage Manager is Maurie Gonzalez. LIFELINE is produced by Danna Hyams and Taylor Gilbert.
ROBERT AXELROD (Playwright) is a screenwriter and playwright based in Los Angeles, originally hailing from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Most recently, Robert’s play Dry Summer had its world premiere at Theatre NOVA.
KEN SAWYER (Director) is an award-winning director based in Los Angeles, California. His work has spanned a wide range of venues with projects that include musicals, plays, experimental theatre, concerts and special events. Ken is honored to return to The Road Theatre Company where he was a founding member and former artistic board member. Directing projects at The Road include the award-winning The Woman In Black, which had a sold-out three-month run in North Hollywood before moving to the Coronet Theatre.
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