Tom Jacobson’s “Hell Mouth” now at The Road

I am a longtime fan of Tom Jacobson’s theatrical work. I think he’s one of Los Angeles’ best playwrights, and he has been for decades. He’s equally at home with structurally and thematically ambitious plays such as Ouroboros or The Ballad of Bimini Baths trilogy and intimate character studies such as Crevasse or Captain of the Bible Quiz Team. The first show I ever reviewed for Variety was Bunbury, his masterful romp through literature’s underserved characters. Not only that, but he’s also impressively prolific and award-winning (LADCC, Stage Raw, LA Weekly and Garland awards). That being said, not every play connects with every viewer. His latest show, Hell Mouth (currently in a world premiere production at The Road Theatre), unfortunately did not quite work for me, although it features many admirable elements.

Tim (Danny Lee Gomez) is a museum curator with a problem. He thinks that one of his supervisors is looking to let him go, so he needs to find a way to keep his job. His friend Samara (Taylor Gilbert) says she knows a man who may have a previously undiscovered Caravaggio painting, and she offers to introduce Tim to him. The man, Spencer (Tony Abatemarco), is a rich, demanding ex-fashion critic, and Tim has to put up with a lot of unpleasant behavior with no assurance that he’ll get the painting that will save his position. Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, Tim’s parents are dealing with the grim daily reality that his father is dying.

Gomez is amiable and sympathetic as Tim, who’s torn between being a loving son and a successful art curator. He has a lot of the heavy lifting of the play in terms of always being onstage (and he’s very capable of it), but his character doesn’t ultimately get much to do except being the straight man between two more vivid characters. Gilbert gets to display both her dramatic and comedic skills, very funny as the lively Samara and convincingly beaten down as Tim’s mother, Lois. Abatemarco is deliciously mean as the acerbic Spencer, demonstrating superb comic timing and high energy in his performance. He’s especially good in a vituperative rant against Tim, in which his anger is so visceral it made the audience gasp with shock.

Director Ann Hearn Tobolowsky manages to stage the frequent switches between locations or time periods seamlessly and gets strong work from her actors. Nicholas Santiago’s projection design brings welcome visual panache to the proceedings, particularly the depictions of the painting being discussed. As with all Jacobson plays, the writing is intelligent and witty. (Spencer – “I was nice once. It didn’t work out.”)  Spencer clearly seems to be a version of Mr. Blackwell, and the material concerning him seemed to me to be the most dramatically compelling in the show (a suggested alternate title might be Sympathy for Mr. Blackwell). I felt that the scenes involving the family dynamics and the meaning of the possible lost Caravaggio painting seemed a bit more familiar or academic, and the “hell mouth” of the title sadly barely makes an appearance.

Hell Mouth is a good production of a play that I didn’t completely embrace, but it has plenty of great acting and writing in it, and your mileage may well vary.

Hell Mouth is a co-presentation by Carrie Menkel-Meadow and Robert Meadow and The Road Theatre Company at The Road Theatre in North Hollywood and plays through May 24, 2026. Tickets are available at https://roadtheatre.org/