SUPER ZEROES UNITE!
Aging heroes, flat jokes,
and laughs that need life support

Golden Age by Thomas J. Nisuraca is the roughest of rough theatre. Staged by Force of Nature Productions and directed by Aurora Culver at North Hollywood’s Sawyer’s Playhouse, Golden Age kicks off with a premise worthy of a Saturday Night Live skit: an old folks’ home for geriatric superheroes. Occupying the Silver Lining Retirement Home are the senior trio of Mighty Girl (Jennifer Ashe), Power Man (David Brent Tucker), and Lightning Lex (Ignacio Navarro)—the Flash in a wheelchair, more or less—and there’s Kirby, aka Masked Man (Richard Van Slyke), a superhero wannabe. Naturally, any league of superheroes requires an adversarial supervillain, in this case, Mr. Malevolent (Dennis Deising).

Unfortunately, Nisuraca never leaps in a single bound to the level of The Tick, Howard the Duck, or even Herbie, the Fat Fury. In fact, even moving faster than a speeding train, he couldn’t reach the same time zone as SNL.

The cast, including Heather Vazquez as Nurse Candy and Elyse Ashton as Nurse Ensemble, give it their all, working hard for every laugh, but they’re only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Barbera Ann Howard has some nice moments as Ruthie, a cantankerous old dame so ornery you’d want a Boy Scout to help her across the street—then be tempted to shove her under the next passing bus.

Nisuraca’s Golden Age offers nothing original and comes across as having been written by the numbers, those numbers being 1-1-1-1-1.

That said, the audience at the performance I attended laughed heartily throughout the show—so either I missed something, or everyone involved in this production just has very loyal friends.

photos courtesy of FONP

Golden Age
Force of Nature Productions
Sawyer’s Playhouse , 11031 Camarillo St. in North Hollywood
Fri & Sat at 8
ends on November 22, 2025
for tickets ($25), visit Force of Nature