ALL’S WELL THAT
BEDS WELL

Keiko Green’s provocative comedy finds plenty of
laughs in the tangled relationships of college life, but
its questions about consent are harder to resolve

Zoe Hertzberg, Sophia Blake, and Mae Linh Young

Marianne is named after the girl her father meant to sleep with.

Back in their small, religious farm town, teenage Benny had his eye on Anna’s friend Marianne. He was drunk. The room was dark. Anna took her friend’s place, got pregnant, and married him. The family told that night’s events as a funny story for eighteen years. Now the parents are divorced, their daughter is a college freshman, and her roommate Lulu hears the story once and calls it rape.

Keiko Green bases her present-day play The Bed Trick on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. Harriet, the third roommate, is a theater student rehearsing Helena, who gets her husband by switching beds with another woman. Harriet’s prologue lays out the rules. You think you are in bed with Person A. You are in bed with Person B. The victim “has zero clue. Ever.”

Karen O’Hanlon

Then the kids run the same con. Marianne decides to lose her virginity. Lulu catches her boyfriend Willis on a dating app and builds fake profiles to test him, one with Harriet’s photo. Marianne takes over the chats as “Harriet” and falls for him. Meanwhile, Benny has found the original Marianne again.

Can a happy ending clean up a lie? The question hangs over every scene. Almost everyone here pleads that nobody was forced. Green keeps adding the other pressures: a borrowed identity, alcohol, fear of being turned down. The funny script has its issues; Harriet’s commentary sometimes explains what a scene has just shown.

Director H. Adam Harris keeps the show moving and lands the comic beats. Fred Kinney‘s multilevel dorm room sits center stage. Its shelves hold music posters, snacks, pet photos, plants, and desk organizers, and each roommate’s shelf matches its owner. Exteriors and off-campus scenes play stage right. An office and a balcony sit stage left. Andrew J. Hungerford‘s lighting shifts mood and marks every step out of a scene into narration. Harriet’s asides to the audience stay clear throughout. Ayricka Johnson designed the costumes, Lia Weed the sound.

Mae Linh Young and Khoi Le

Zoe Hertzberg gives Lulu a mean streak with hurt beneath it. Mae Linh Young lets Marianne’s innocence give way to a need to control everyone around her. Sophia Blake‘s Harriet is instantly recognizable to anyone who did theater in high school or college. Khoi Le‘s buff, sexy Willis wants to be a sensitive boyfriend, but he is tempted to stray. Ponytailed Erik Dylan Matibag is believable as Benny, a slightly geeky middle-aged academic.

Karen O’Hanlon is the standout as Anna. She plays it grounded: a mother who does not have it all figured out, facing a daughter who expected her to.

Green and Harris catch the rush of college, when sex can feel like love and a bad decision like the start of a great story. For this middle-aged critic, the memories came back bittersweet. Marianne wants Willis to fall for her before he learns who she is. She has heard that story before. She was named after it.

Karen O’Hanlon and Mae Linh Young

photos by Eric Keitel Photography
poster art by KC Wilkerson

The Bed Trick
Chance Theater
Fyda-Mar Stage at the Bette Aitken Theater Arts Center
5522 E. La Palma Ave. in Anaheim
2 hours and 15 minutes, including intermission
Fri at 8; Sat at 3 & 8; Sun at 3
ends on October 4, 2026
for tickets ($12–$48), call call 888.455.4212 or visit Chance Theater

for more shows, visit Theater in LA

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Sophia Blake and Erik Dylan Matibag