Short Review: Winter’s Waltz

Sacramento playwright Richard Broadhurst reportedly kept this play in a drawer for the 15 years, but this belated premiere at California Stage is both welcome and long overdue. The play presents Ingram Wychoff, a one-time literary celebrity living alone in Manhattan, gazing out a picture window at the twin towers of the (new) World Trade Center. Wychoff welcomes Jamal, a small-time hustler who was briefly involved with the Black Panthers, currently peddling marijuana on the street. Broadhurst explores the vast discrepancy in these guys’ age and background (white rural Kansas to gritty New York City). Janis Stevens directs resourceful veteran Loren Taylor and the much younger Tory Scroggins—their tag-team exchange turns Broadhurst’s witty lines into lively comic banter onstage, without diminishing the script’s dramatic mission. Fri 8pm, Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm, Through 2/18, $12-$20; California Stage, 1725 25th St. (the R25 Arts Complex), (916) 451-5822, www.calstage.org.