‘One of the Good Ones’ Review: Pasadena Playhouse’s Cross-Cultural Comedy Brings a Norman Lear Sensibility to the Stage
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Does “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” count as a genre unto itself, given how many plotlines in the last half-century have relied on the suitor-out-of-water supper guest as a linchpin?
That trope seemed to have reached its furthest, most subversive extreme with “Get Out,” but there are still writers who are drawn to the trope of the unwelcome boyfriend without actually extending that nervous suppertime trope into, like, horror.
In the play “One of the Good Ones,” which is having its world premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, playwright Gloria Calderón Kellett (who co-created Netflix’s “One Day at a Time” reboot) treats the basic structure of the 1967 Hepburn-Tracy-Poitier film as if it’s still as sturdy as ever.
But she does it with what barely still counts as a twist in 2024, that it is a white guy who’s the odd fish out, presenting himself as instant marriage material for a cherished Latina daughter.
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