[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of Beverly Hills Playhouse’s world premiere of The Difficulty Adjustment, written and directed by Allen Barton and produced by Mia Christou, running November 6-29.
The Beverly Hills Playhouse never disappoints. And I do mean never. This new play, Allen Barton’s The Difficulty Adjustment, is another perceptive, entertaining and thoughtful story. Two stories, actually.
There is something truly thrilling about watching a brand-new play that isn’t afraid to wrestle with the big, messy, uncomfortable ideas shaping our lives right now. The Difficulty Adjustment, playing at the storied Beverly Hills Playhouse, does exactly that, and it does so with a sharp wit, a big heart, and a fierce intellectual curiosity that lingers long after the lights come up.
“I don’t know his real name. No one uses their real name.” Photo by Mia Christou.
This brilliantly perceptive play connects the very human reality of the 2008 crash and the 2020 economic impacts of COVID on two wildly different men. One a professor and one a theatre owner. Both suffering, both unable to resist pushing back against the status quo to hugely differing results.
The play weaves together these two entirely separate financial crises, two decades apart. Examining how two very different men respond when pushed to the brink. In 2008, amidst the rubble of the global financial collapse, we meet Sterling (Matt Le Nevez), a brilliant and disillusioned economics professor who may or may not be Satoshi Nakamoto, the legendary and elusive creator of Bitcoin.
“You caved, man.” Photo by Mia Christou.
Twelve years later, during the height of the 2020–21 Covid lockdowns, we meet Ethan (Peter O’Connor), the owner of a small Los Angeles theatre. When the city shuts his doors, Ethan refuses to stay quiet. At first, his utter rejection of the government preventing creative artists from performing consists of social media rants, but when he pens a long and impassioned article and publishes it on his theatre school’s website, it resonates, is shared and suddenly he is ‘that guy.’ He and his wife Lori (Cameron Meyer) quickly learn the steep, personal price of speaking your mind in post-Covid America. Lori is fired from her studio job, and that, combined with the shuttering of Ethan’s theatre puts them in perilous waters financially. Sound familiar?
In the play, these two men never actually meet, yet their stories echo off one another. We also bounce around the decades and the consequences of their actions. And as we follow them through these surreal times, the timelines eventually collide…if not the stories themselves.
“Hold on, hold on! Hi! Hello. Can I have a moment?”
Photo by Mia Christou.
Barton, who wears both playwright and director hats with remarkable poise, trusts his audience to connect the dots. Whether Sterling is passionately dismantling the modern monetary system in front of his students or facing an intense, shadowy interrogation years later, or whether Ethan is fighting to keep his theatre and his dignity afloat, the central question remains deeply human: What happens to ordinary people when the systems they rely on suddenly turn against them?
Of course, a play this dense with ideas only works if the performances keep it grounded in flesh-and-blood reality, and of course the Beverly Hills Playhouse ensemble is nothing short of stellar. Matt Le Nevez brings a captivating, restless intensity to Sterling, making complex economic theories feel urgent, personal, and unexpectedly theatrical. Opposite him in the timeline, Peter O’Connor gives Ethan a raw, relatable vulnerability. He is prickly, proud, and deeply human, making his slow reckoning with the fallout of his choices genuinely moving.
The supporting cast shines just as brightly, giving every scene crisp momentum and welcome flashes of humor. Cameron Meyer brings warmth and quiet resilience to Lori, while Jody Booth delivers terrific comedic timing as Lori’s sharp-tongued sister, Lisa, providing much-needed levity when the stakes feel suffocating.
Mia Christou, who also produced the show, turns in a chilling and magnetic performance as Penny, a National Security Agency operative whose scenes with Sterling crackle with tension. Rounding out the tight-knit company, Rich Rosales (Lopez) and Jason Chiumento (Lucif) add texture and grounding to every corner of this shifting world.
Photo by Mia Christou.
Visually and technically, the production is sleek, smart, and purposeful. The set design by Mia Christou and Collin Bernsen seems to have been thoughtfully and subtly littered with oversized tech. In one scene, the stage is a lecture theatre complete with projections, with the audience as the students, and in the next it morphs into Ethan’s theatre, and finally into a warehouse where he holds court still.
All this nuance cleverly mirrors the digital and systemic threads tying these characters together. Derrick McDaniel’s lighting design shifts seamlessly between timelines and moods, while Sofia Macias’s projection and audio design—including Sterling’s lecture slides—adds both clarity and theatrical flair.
The Difficulty Adjustment, in the Bitcoin world, refers to a proof of the actual mining, creating a kind of relative value for the coins. In this play, it seems more like the literal difficulty we have with adjusting…to our lives, to the world, to aging, to radical new thoughts and ideas which are happening lately at lightning speed. And the fears…of being left behind, of being cast aside and of never quite being able to keep up until we are utterly irrelevant. Yikes.
How are we all supposed to cope? With this increasingly sci-fi world where drones carry bombs and robots deliver our lunch order, AI is rapidly becoming absolutely essential in almost every single way, while its kinks are still being worked out and we are held hostage to it all. Honestly, I feel like heading to the mountains half the time.
But it’s the performances in this fascinating play that hold it all together. Visceral and real, powerful and believable, each wonderful actor brings their individual style and nuance and what they deliver are stories and relationships that are as cerebral as they are intimate. I’m still thinking about this play…
The Difficulty Adjustment runs until November 29, so do yourself a favor and catch this wonderful play before it closes.
Tickets:
Where:
The Beverly Hills Playhouse
254 S Robertson Blvd, Beverly Hills
When:
November 6 – 29
Friday and Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 7pm