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Review: ‘The Staircase’ ascends theatrical heights at South Coast Repertory

May 4, 2025

Late in the world premiere of fledgling playwright Noa Gardner’s compelling “The Staircase,” an 84-year-old Hawaiian mother confronts her middle-aged son with a universal truth about the generational burdens often handed down within families.

In pidgin English/Hawaiian Creole cadences, she warns, “… cuz I can see dat you’re carryin’ something you don’t need to carry.”

Now on South Coast Repertory’s Argyros stage, “The Staircase” probes a contemporary challenge in American life: the emotional toll of caretaking on the caretaker.

A play about unburdening the weight of responsibility — and the personal guilt often accompanying it — might imply a drag on an audience’s spirits.

But this captivating one act, 100-minute drama embraces and enlivens Gardner’s humanistic writing through a superbly directed cast of five and a lovingly curated and accomplished production.

Ehulani Hope Kane and Wil Kahele star in “The Staircase,” on stage at South Coast Repertory through May 18. (Photo by Robert Huskey)

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Ehulani Hope Kane and Wil Kahele star in “The Staircase,” on stage at South Coast Repertory through May 18. (Photo by Robert Huskey)

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Events take place in a Hawaii distant from coastal resorts and tropical cocktails. A sequence of nighttime scenes transpires in the interior of a modestly kept, but appealing two-story house with a formidable wooden staircase and poor lighting. Outside the structure, a mango tree looms nearby.

The unspecified timeframe is likely set during the late1970s/early 1980s (a visual clue is a newly purchased, boxy Sony TV on which Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” reigns supreme).

The four characters are unnamed, but with archetypal descriptors: Mother, Son, Sweetheart and Father.

Father, we learn, experienced a fatal mishap when Son, at a young age, was not on hand to intervene. Subsequently, Father intermittently lives on in Mother’s erratic memory as an idealized version which Son rejects. The challenges of maintaining responsibility for Mother’s day-to-day living weigh on Son, acutely aware of his personal life gone adrift.

Mother is inhabited in a protean characterization from Ehulani Hope Kane.

The actress, making her SCR debut along with her fellow castmates, is a mother, grandmother and veteran of a half-century in the performing arts. She emphatically conveys a spirit animatedly alive in Mother’s native Hawaiian roots, with a naturalistic determination that makes clear her voice will count no matter what the obstacles.

“Stairs is a young woman’s game, I tell you,” Mother observes, drawing a laugh from the audience, as Kane carefully navigates the formidable staircase that Father designed for the house and has left behind.

Wil Kahele is a veteran actor from Honolulu. He charts a Son clandestine and resignedly passive at the outset, the actor then slowly enlarging the character’s conflicts and internal needs with grace and assuredness as Son creates a future by facing off against the past.

Two smaller, story-amplifying roles are written for the son’s intermittent Sweetheart and for Father.

Nara Cardenas brings an open and warm generosity as the “sweetheart” whose presence beckons Son with a second chance to claim a life with a future. Ben Cain suits the role of a self-assured imperious father figure. Father-Son confrontations are nothing new in dramas, but in this case it leads to a cathartic liberation.

There is a fifth significant performer, actively shaping the production while literally overseeing it. Situated above the audience and spotlighted in one of the theater’s second level boxes, musician Kainui Blaze Whiting is heard throughout striking intermittent beats on two “ipu,” traditional Hawaiian percussion instruments made from gourds.

Whiting additionally plays a Hawaiian stringed instrument and contributes impactful vocal chants. The performance is a mesmerizing sonic presence. This work is further is enhanced by a subtle sound design credited to Amelia Anello.

Visually, Rachel Hauck’s scenic design is also an excellent visual ingredient. A veteran of four other SCR productions, Hauck has won a Tony award for her design of “Hadestown” and is a recent nominee for another Broadway production, “Swept Away.”

The set is flanked and dominated by the staircase, which is both imposing and mysterious in ascending into a darkness the audience can’t see. Inside, the house is a carefully organized assembly of an object-filled living and kitchen space that connotes both lived-in-ness with casual decay.

Sara Ryung’s utilitarian costuming at first conveys down-market dressing devoid of all aspiration, comfort at the expense of ambition. But as events move forward, she introduces interesting touches that signal character aspiration.

The action is supported through adroit, nighttime lighting from Josh Epstein, who likely delights in continually frustrating Son with a balky lamp fixture with a mind of its own.

Ultimately, the likely key to the successes in this show is the impact of a talented ringmaster. It’s a safe bet that “The Staircase” has that in director Gaye Taylor Upchurch.

The components of this production flow unerringly without any facet feeling estranged from the larger aims of the storytelling. Genius talent is real when it doesn’t call attention to itself.

There is a quibble, however, reaching back into the writing of the Mother character and it leaves one with a final bit of unease. From early on there are repeated instances of memory loss and disassociation, signaling the character’s onset of dementia.

But the end of the play suggests a level of self-sufficiency for an 84-year old that seem at odds with what we have been shown, and which cast an unintended shadow over an otherwise upbeat denouement.

Since 1983, SCR has awarded 356 commissions to 245 playwrights, composers and lyricists. “The Staircase” is the 164th fully produced premiere the theater has staged of a homegrown new work and it surely must stand tall in the theater’s legacy.

A final word of cautionary advice: only two more weeks of performances remain. Moving quickly for tickets to “The Stairway” would be a very good step to take.

‘The Staircase’

Rating: 3 1/2 stars (out of a possible 4)

Where: Julianne Argyros stage, South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: Through May 18; 7:45 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays

Tickets: $35-$114

Information: 714-708-5555; scr.org

Review: ‘The Staircase’ ascends theatrical heights at South Coast Repertory Orange County Register

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Review: ‘The Staircase’ ascends theatrical heights at South Coast Repertory

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