THE MONSTERS HAVE NOTES

Two kaiju flatten a city,
then stick around to argue

Godzilla generally has better things to do after destroying a city than discuss the cultural implications. KAIJU, a world-premiere play by Dan Caffrey, starts with the destruction and then asks its gigantic monsters to talk about it.

That premise alone should get the attention of anyone who has spent happy hours watching Godzilla, Gamera, Mothra and their enormous brethren stomp through cities. Two mythical monsters have just reduced one to rubble. Instead of immediately launching into Round Two, a debate breaks out amid the wreckage. Caffrey uses the conventions of kaiju to take aim at the pretensions of art and culture while digging into questions of power and artistic responsibility. In other words, the monsters may be enormous, but apparently so are their opinions.

KAIJU launches an interesting experiment between The Road Theatre Company and BroadStage. KAIJU was selected for a pilot initiative pairing a major presenting organization with an intimate Los Angeles theater, giving a world-premiere play additional resources and potentially helping it find productions elsewhere after its initial run.

There is another reason for otaku to perk up: these creatures are not merely metaphorical monsters discussed by human characters. KAIJU has actual creature suits. Shealyn Biron and Lee Diemer designed them, with Cerise Preston serving as creature-suit costume consultant. Nicholas Santiago handles projection design, Lacey Anzelc the scenery, Derrick McDaniel the lighting and Ryan McRee the sound. In Road Theatre’s 76-seat space, where there isn’t exactly room for a 50-meter radioactive lizard, watching the production figure out how to create giant-monster scale could be half the fun.

The cast offers another tantalizing clue. Cherish Monique Duke plays both Apex and Amelia, while Leandro Cano plays Goliath and Manual. Whether that doubling means humans and monsters are counterparts, alter egos or something stranger isn’t explained in the press material, which is probably for the best. The remaining cast includes Billy Baker, Gabie Faulkner, Genki Hall, Ann Hearn, Sapna Kumar, Noa Lev-Ari, and Jon Snow.

Caffrey comes to the project with serious genre credentials of his own. He is a pop-culture critic as well as a playwright, wrote Radiohead FAQ, and co-hosts The Losers’ Club: A Stephen King Podcast and Halloweenies: A Horror Franchise Podcast. His audio drama “Mortality Rate” was commissioned by 20th Century Studios as a tie-in to the 2023 Stephen King film The Boogeyman. KAIJU was developed through The Road’s Summer Playwrights Festival and other programs before landing this world premiere, helmed by Ken Sawyer, certainly one of L.A.’s greatest directors.

But never mind the institutional machinery for a moment: there are two gigantic monsters, creature suits, projections and a city in ruins, all squeezed into an intimate North Hollywood theater. The twist is that KAIJU appears less interested in simply reproducing the pleasures of a monster movie than in using them to pick a fight about art itself. For kaiju fans accustomed to looking for the human ideas lurking beneath all those tons of rubber, rubble and roaring, this could be one very interesting rampage.

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KAIJU
The Road Theatre Company & BroadStage
The Road Theatre, 10747 Magnolia Blvd. in North Hollywood
Fri.–Sat. at 8; Sun. at 2
ends on November 1, 2026
for tickets ($17–$39), call 818.761.8838 or visit The Road Theatre Company

for more shows, visit Theatre in Los Angeles

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