Review: LakehouseRanchDotPNG Dives Deep Into Political Theater With ‘Trotskyist’

Samuel Krogh as Lev and Garrett Colon as the younger Daniel in Alex Boyd’s “Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist” now at LakehouseRanchDotPNG at Main Street Playhouse, Miami Lakes, through Sunday, Aug. 17.

They debate ideologies with deep-dive dialogue. Andy Boyd’s “Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist” is a lesson in high stakes for its characters, both personal and political.

It’s also a way for the start-up experimental and absurdist theater, LakehouseRanchDotPNG, now going into its fourth season, to begin its foray into political theater, something the company’s artistic director Brandon Urrutia, and the director of “Trotskyist” mentioned before curtain. The play runs through Sunday, Aug. 17 at the Main Street Playhouse in Miami Lakes.

It’s wise to read the linear notes in the back of the program before the play begins for a brush up or an education. What is a Trotskyist? What is the Permanent Revolution?, and to find out if those in this particular theater company are communists, just in case you were wondering . . .”We’re just a theater company doing cool stuff.”

Cool stuff and a lofty play selection to boot.

The 90-minute play, in three scenes, is marked by historical turning points across four decades. The protagonist is Lev Trachtenberg (an engaging and superbly nuanced Samuel Krogh), who we first meet as a City College student, a Trotskyist, in 1939.

Lev (Samuel Krogh), right, gives one of his students, Curtis (Warren Welds) some literature to read in “Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist” by Andy Boyd at LakehouseRanchDotPNG. (Photo by Richard Lewis)

The playwright instructs in the script: “This play should move at the speed of the city.  The characters, Lev especially, revel in the skilled use of language in the way a box might revel in his technique.”

Let the fight begin. It’s Scene 1. Lev enters the college cafeteria late at night carrying a bag of deli sandwiches, pastrami and Swiss on rye. Daniel Kaplan (Garrett Colon), a stout impressionable lad wearing suspenders is sleeping. They are the City College Cafeteria Pugilists – The CCCP, which translates to Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Maybe not the best acronym.

Daniel wants to be a lawyer. He thought joining the Pugilists would look good on his resume. He’s in awe of Lev. “Every Trotskyist at City College. They follow you like you were – “ Lev reacts: “Trotsky himself?” Daniel: “I was gonna say Max Schactman . . .”

If this reference goes over some audience member’s heads, yes, indeed. A good asked for ChatGPT: Who is Max Schactman? A major figure in the Trotskyist movement beginning in the 1930s.”

And that’s the trouble with “Trotskyists” – interest in the characters and in their struggles is overshadowed by trying to figure out just what everything means. Daniel wants to be a lawyer so he can help Jews. Help them immigrate – but we never learn much more of the depth of his compassion. Ben Roth (Richard K. Weber) enters to complicate things further. He’s a Communist. He accuses Daniel of running with the Troskyites, derogatorily referencing them as such throughout. Daniel is undecided which side he wants to be on. Lev lectures some more. Stalin has lost the support of the Russian people. Ben counters back, with a left hook. “It shows your true aim is not to fight for justice.”

The pace moves at a clip under the nimble direction of Urratia. Just as Boyd suggests, it’s a runaway train.

In the 1960s, Lev is teaching, a professor of Modernist Literature at Columbia University. He’s confronted by a Curtis, (Warren Welds) who is looking for an extension for an assignment. He’s also prepared to spar with the prof who is quick to tell the Black student that he “marched with Dr. King in ’63, that he lobbied hard to get the scholarship program started for the minority students, and that he was the one who “told the President that if we really cared about racial justice we had to open our doors to the black proletariat.”

Curtis tells the professor: “The writers in your course. It almost feels like they are making it purposely difficult to understand what they are saying.” Sometimes it feels like Boyd is, too.

The fact that Lev is teaching at Columbia isn’t lost on the modern audience since the current headlines surrounding Columbia today and the most recent news that the university settled a $221 million lawsuit with the Trump administration so that they get $1.3 billion in federal funding restored – with the stipulation from the federal government that they take steps to curb antisemitism on campus.

Curtis (Warren Welds), a student at Columbia University, asks for an extension on his assignment in LakehouseRanchDotPNG’s production of Alan Boyd’s “Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotkyist.” (Photo by Richard Lewis)

And there’s more relevance to today’s events, particularly in the U.S. and politics – people on one side, people on the other, both convinced they are right in their own convictions.

Scene 3, we find Lev in the 1980s. He’s a conservative think tank leader in the Reagan years. He has a 25th-floor penthouse overlooking Central Park. But is it enough? Has he sold out?

Daniel enters and they haven’t spoken in 20 years. He’s played by the actor we saw as the janitor cleaning up the City College cafeteria in Scene 1. Pete Rogan as the older Daniel, with his bushy beard and glasses, is dressed in the same suspenders the younger Daniel wore. Perhaps because of Rogan and Krogh’s wonderful chemistry, or maybe because Boyd has toned down the non-stop rhetoric, this is where we clearly see characters, humans steeped in some nostalgia with and without regrets.

Daniel, now 57, has published a bestseller, a memoir, that one book reviewer called “The Jewish ‘Roots.’ “ He never did become a lawyer, he became a writer, then a professor, now is doing the book tour circuit. (Does Boyd tell us why he didn’t become a lawyer?)

Then they launch into the playwright’s verbal boxing match. About Stalinism, Vietnam, Lev peaking out against the anti-war Left. And Daniel asking how someone so determined to a conviction has become a champion of the political right?

We never really get the answer to that question, either. No, Lev has called Daniel to his office after two decades for a reason and it isn’t just to wax nostalgia.

He has a secret and he needs Daniel’s help. To reveal the spoiler would be, well, to reveal the spoiler. But, he wants Daniel to write his memoir. “Start at the beginning. 1939. When we first met,” he tells Daniel.

An older Daniel (Pete Rogan) meets Lev (Samuel Krogh) decades later in New York City at a penthouse office overlooking Central Park. (Photo by Richard Lewis)

Tyler Regalado keeps the set sparse. A faux brick wall splashed with gray paint on either side doesn’t attempt to look realistic. It serves as a backdrop for the illusions of the characters. There’s a table with books, a chair. There’s an interesting door-like rectangle that changes color and sometimes casts a shadow of the character thanks to lighting director Leonardo Urbina. Alex Tarradell’s sound design plays a haunting organ soundtrack underneath throughout. It’s subtle and never interruptive. There are also political songs that play at the beginning and the end. Erin Proctor’s costumes are period-appropriate and help define the passage of time.

And it’s a wise choice to not use age make up or any other falsity for Lev’s passage of time. Only glasses and a blazer create the change for the ‘80s.

Urrutia’s commitment to the play is everywhere, including the ensemble he’s chosen who are equally committed to making sense of the verbal acrobatics.

“Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist” isn’t usual fare, precisely what Urrutia and LakehouseRanchDotPNG bring to the South Florida scene.

If you’re looking for an easy, breezy night out to sit back and passively enjoy a play, this isn’t for you. For those willing to be challenged and wanting to support alternative theater, this is it. And, as far as political theater goes, this is the past informing the present.

WHAT:  Alex Boyd’s “Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist”

WHERE:  LakehouseRanchDotPNG, Main Street Playhouse, 6812 Main St., Miami Lakes

WHEN:  8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through Sunday, Aug. 17

COST:  $20.

INFORMATION: 786-427-4721 and lakehouseranchdotpng.com

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com.