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Happy 95th birthday, Frank Gehry. Let's give you the Disney Hall you really wanted

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Happy 95th birthday, Frank Gehry. Let's give you the Disney Hall you really wanted

Over the last two decades, Walt Disney Concert Hall has blazed cultural trails like no place else. We can rightfully talk about the L.A. Philharmonic before and after Frank Gehry built it a hypnotizing new home. We can divide downtown L.A. into pre- and post-Disney. We can go so far as to distinguish orchestral life, not only in L.A. but everywhere, in the same way.

Gehry turns 95 on Wednesday, and the L.A. Phil season, which began with a gala led by Gustavo Dudamel celebrating the architect, has, in ongoing tributes to the hall and in just doing its thing for these nearly five months, readily revealed, week after week, all that Disney is. And, alas, all that Disney inexcusably isn’t. At least not yet. But the best of Disney first.

Building Disney was a long, laborious, contentious, financially dicey process, one for which we’ve never had a full or convincing account. I’ve never gotten straight answers about who did what to whom and when.

In 1987, Ernest Fleischmann, at the time the transformative head of the L.A. Phil, enticed Lillian Disney to give $50 million for a concert hall to be built in honor of her late husband, Walt, as an addition to the Music Center. Fleischmann, who had once hailed the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, built for the L.A. Phil in 1964 as an acoustic wonder, eventually pronounced it unworthy. It still is, but that’s another story.

Presumably, Fleischmann assured Lillian Disney that this generous sum would be sufficient for the new hall, knowing full well that much more would be needed (ultimately, more like $274 million). Although Fleischmann and Gehry were close friends, Gehry was viewed as far too radical for the conservative classical music establishment, which feared chain-link fences and whatnot. One Music Center board member proposed that the original blueprints for the Chandler be dug up and that they just build “the same damn thing” across the street.

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A competition was arranged. Gehry’s model, which was exciting but far more conventional than the masterpiece he ultimately designed, was so superior to the others, especially in its welcoming feeling, that even Gehry’s detractors begrudgingly approved. The four other models, all by distinguished architects, were suspiciously clueless.

I never could get Fleischmann, or anyone else close to the competition, to explain why. Did Fleischmann and others on the jury know all along that Gehry was exactly what the orchestra and the city needed and that the only way to get it was to rig the competition by misleading the other architects? All insisted it was fair. Until evidence proves otherwise, I’m sticking with Fleischmann’s visionary flare eclipsing committee-compromised fair.

The construction site for Disney Hall at 1st Street and Grand Avenue in 1995.

(Carol Cheetham / For The Times)

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It would take 16 years to build Disney. Fundraising stalled repeatedly. Gehry’s detractors (including some leading voices at this newspaper) had a field day. The Music Center did not display much enthusiasm.

In the early 1990s, the L.A. riots, the Northridge earthquake and a recession took further wind out of the new hall’s prospective sails. When I arrived at The Times in spring 1996, everyone told me that the hall was moribund. The county, which owns the Music Center and the land on which Disney sits, had built only the parking lot. The county’s supervisors, with the exception of Zev Yaroslavsky, were ready to pull the plug.

But Fleischmann tenaciously hung on. Much later, Esa-Pekka Salonen, then-music director, confessed to me that he had offered his resignation to Fleischmann, in part over his disappointment of the hall’s seeming failure and figuring that maybe another conductor could do more. There was also considerable disgruntlement among board members and patrons over Salonen’s advocacy of new music, despite the fact that he was attracting a younger audience and was increasingly seen as a vital new voice in classical music.

A fundraising deadline loomed, and Fleischmann persuaded Salonen to stick it out a little longer. Just in time, the tide turned, thanks to three fortuitous events. Gehry’s new museum in Bilbao, Spain, wowed the world. A Stravinsky festival that Salonen and the L.A. Phil put on in Paris wowed not only the French but also L.A. Phil board members, including Disney skeptics. The clincher was a series of individual gifts of $5 million each from the publisher of the L.A. Times, then-Mayor Richard Riordan (using his personal money to make what was at the time an anonymous donation) and philanthropist Eli Broad, who then took over the final fundraising.

Disney Hall under construction in 2001.

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(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Disney opened as an instant icon. It catapulted the L.A. Phil to far greater fame than the orchestra had ever known. It spearheaded the revival of downtown and shaped the identity of DTLA, as it would soon be known.

With Disney, the 21st century orchestra was born. The immediacy of the acoustics, the intimate connection between the musicians and listeners, the warmth and visual allure of the interior — all were thrilling. The new hall invited making and consuming new music seem natural. The interior, shaped a little like a ship, put an audience in the mood for adventure.

For the next two decades, the L.A. Phil went from strength to innovative strength, helped by two progressive music directors, Salonen and, beginning in 2009, Dudamel.

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Starting with the “Tristan Project” in 2004, Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” conducted by Salonen with video by Bill Viola and staged by Peter Sellars, Disney Hall inspired a full expansion of the notion of what classical music could be. The symphony orchestra, with traditions that go back more than three centuries, now had a venue ripe for experimenting with emerging technologies and for incorporating other musical genres and traditions, even other art forms — be they painting, sculpture, dance, theater, performance art, poetry, cinema, video. The L.A. Phil became a model of how an institution could matter, and its home became a tourist attraction, a site to see and a place to be.

Artist Refik Anadol designed projections that lighted up Disney Hall to celebrate the L.A. Phil’s centennial in 2018. Gehry’s original plan for the hall called for live images of the orchestra to be projected on the hall during performances.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

We’ve had a taste of that this season in concerts by Dudamel and Salonen with a range of music, old and memorably new.

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At the gala, Dudamel conducted Salonen’s quirky “Fog,” a tribute to Gehry, written five years ago for his 90th birthday. It recalled the first time the composer and conductor heard anything played in the hall while it was under construction.

A few weeks later, Salonen led the premiere of “Tiu,” a big orchestral piece celebrating the hall’s 20th anniversary. Based on the Swedish word for 20, but which also can be Finnish for counting eggs or a musical score, Salonen played with the ordering of 20 chords, turning them into a resplendent phantasmagoric series of dances, fanfares, misty harmonic clouds and melancholic melody.

In what has been an informal festival of Salonen’s scores, the Los Angeles Master Chorale — which has also grown into the big time as the other resident company in Disney — joined the L.A. Phil for Salonen’s wild, dada-inspired “Karawane.”

Dudamel premiered two new works by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, the second of which, “Revolución Diamantina” (Glitter Revolution), a five-act ballet score that revolves around the celebrated 2019 feminist march in Mexico City, is relentless in its sonic invention.

Dudamel’s performance of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird,” Salonen’s of Strauss’ “An Alpine Symphony” and Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloé,” along with Zubin Mehta’s of Mahler’s First Symphony, sounded unlike they might be played by any other orchestra in any other space — namely site specific, an occasion.

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Just this month, British composer and part-time Angeleno Thomas Adès introduced his recent “Five Spells From the Tempest.” When Adès conducted the premiere of his second opera, based on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” at Royal Opera in 2004, shortly after Disney Hall had opened, the London orchestra sounded lackluster in Covent Garden. The opera seemed a misfire and wasn’t all that more impressive when it went to the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Yet Adès’ 22-minute symphonic condensation of the opera score was a knockout when he conducted at Disney.

So it goes. But Disney has also made us complacent. The sorry fact is that the hall has never been the best it can be, and there seems to be far too little motivation to take the place to its necessary next step, almost as if it were 1996 again.

Downtown has not recovered from the pandemic. The Gehry-designed mixed-used development the Grand opened across the street from Disney in fall 2022 but has yet to come to life, struggling to entice restaurants and retail. It has fixtures in which projectors can be installed to create images on Disney. Gehry originally chose a steel skin suitable for projecting video of whatever concert was occurring at night. That’s never happened. He couldn’t get the Music Center to properly light the building at all.

Gustavo Dudamel conducts the L.A. Phil in a modest orchestra pit for Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” in January. Gehry originally wanted the option of a deeper pit, but it was lost in cost-cutting.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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Gehry also designed an orchestra pit for the hall that was cut because of cost. Earlier this year, he got a chance to try out that notion with a shallow, makeshift pit created for a staging of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” for which the architect also designed sets that essentially turned the whole hall into glorious installation art. Installing a real pit, acoustically tuned, should be a no-brainer.

There are the other long-proposed modifications that include turning BP Hall, where pre-concert talks are held, into a full-fledged chamber music hall, revamping the outdoor amphitheater into an enclosed jazz club and replacing the 1st Street steps with a glass enclosed bar that Gehry would name the Ernest, in honor of Fleischmann.

But who is even around to make that happen? Downtown feels grim. County supervisors show little interest in the Music Center. The new Colburn School concert hall on 2nd Street that Gehry designed has just begun construction after bureaucratic delays. The project’s crucial plaza, though, has been indefinitely postponed. An arts corridor on Grand Avenue surely would, as Disney proved, spark a new DTLA resurgence, but City Hall is not acting like it cares.

As for the Music Center: Over the second weekend this month, I attended Pina Bausch’s “The Rite of Spring” in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Matthew Bourne’s “Romeo and Juliet” at the Ahmanson Theatre, and I felt like I had wandered back in time.

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Bausch’s once supposedly revolutionary Stravinsky ballet, which she choreographed in 1975 when she was just beginning, was included in the first U.S. appearances of her company at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium as part of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. Even then, impressive as it was, with magnificently disciplined dancers dashing on a peat-moss floor, it was clear that this was the kind of old-school abstractly modernist ballet that Bausch had outgrown.

Stravinsky’s score to “The Rite” culminated Salonen’s opening night concert for Disney in 2003, and that was all it took to understand what this hall could do. The first recording in Disney was Salonen conducting “The Rite,” and he performed it often enough in the hall, as has Dudamel, that it is a kind of informal Disney theme song.

(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

In the Chandler, Bausch’s company played a recording of “The Rite.” Neither the conductor nor the orchestra of the lumbering performance was credited. The recording quality was coarse, and the score was loudly amplified, a solo bassoon in its mysterious high register sounding like a pigeon being tortured. The “Rite” of Disney was terribly wronged.

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At the other end of the recently renovated Music Center plaza, bland and lifeless, Bourne brought the 10th of his choreographic productions to the Ahmanson. This take on Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet,” set in a sanatorium with teenagers climbing the walls, has Bourne’s signature clever movement, which can be delightful, and tons of talent onstage.

But how un-Disney to have those gleaming tile walls for a set. Again; the music was recorded, Prokofiev reduced in length and instrumentation, the score sanatorium-sanitized.

In 2018, L.A. choreographer Benjamin Millepied created a site-specific gender-bending version of Prokofiev’s ballet with his L.A. Dance Project for Dudamel and the L.A. Phil. The dance took over Disney — the stage, the seating areas, backstage, the dressing rooms, the garden — as Millepied followed his dancers around with a video camera. Dudamel conducted a soaring performance, and every inch of the hall came to life. Romeo and Juliet weren’t locked away under key, they were among us, their world ours.

That has been the beauty of Gehry’s creation. He wanted it to be our city’s living room, part of our lives. And he left room for more. But we don’t have a Fleischmann. The L.A. Phil is leaderless without a chief executive and with Dudamel’s tenure ending after two more seasons. Who at the Music Center or City Hall can make anything happen? Time is running out. The 2028 Olympics are practically around the corner. Gehry isn’t getting any younger. And it appears that Los Angeles is not getting any wiser.

Frank Gehry looks toward Disney Hall from the Conrad hotel at the Grand across the street.

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(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Entertainment

After Epstein scandal, Hollywood bidders race for Wasserman’s $3-billion agency

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After Epstein scandal, Hollywood bidders race for Wasserman’s -billion agency

Several private equity firms and Hollywood power players, including United Talent Agency and longtime agent Patrick Whitesell, have expressed interest in buying parts of Casey Wasserman’s music and sports management firm after it abruptly went up for sale.

Wasserman became ensnared in controversy earlier this year after his salacious decades-old emails to Ghislaine Maxwell, an accomplice of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, were released as part of the U.S. Justice Department’s trove of Epstein files.

The agency auction is in the early stages, according to three people close to the process but not authorized to comment.

Earlier this week, several interested parties submitted proposals to meet a preliminary deadline in the auction, two of the sources said.

The company, which changed its name to the Team last month, is expected to be valued at around $3 billion.

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Providence Equity Partners holds the majority stake. The private equity firm has discussed selling the entire company or carving off Wasserman’s minority interest. Providence also has considered selling the bulk of the firm and staying on as a minority investor, one of the sources said. Another scenario could involve separating, then selling the individual business units that make up the Team.

Wasserman and Providence’s company boasts an enviable roster of music artists, including Kendrick Lamar, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran. Its sports marketing practice is viewed as particularly lucrative and has potential to grow in value as big dollars flow into sports that draw large crowds.

Wasserman, who declined to comment, has a veto right over any sale of the company that he has spent a quarter of a century building.

UTA, which also declined to comment, is among the most aggressive suitors, the sources said. The Team’s sports marketing and music representation divisions would dramatically boost the Beverly Hills agency’s profile and client roster.

Whitesell, former executive chairman of Endeavor, separately has been motivated to make investments in sports, media and entertainment since last year when he left the talent agency that he and Ari Emanuel built. Whitesell launched a new firm with seed money from private equity firm Silver Lake, and last spring he started WIN Sports Group to represent professional football players.

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Whitesell wasn’t immediately available for comment.

European investment firm Permira also has expressed interest, according to a knowledgeable source. Permira declined to comment.

The New York Times first reported that Permira, UTA and Whitesell had expressed interest.

The sales process is expected to stretch into summer, the knowledgeable people said. The auction could become complicated particularly if Providence decides to unwind the business.

For example, UTA could not buy the entire company because of the Brillstein television unit. The agency is bound by an agreement with the Writers Guild of America that prevents it from owning television production.

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Investment bank Moelis & Company is managing the sale. A representative of the firm declined comment.

Wasserman also is the chairman of LA28, the nonprofit group that will be staging the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in two years.

Following revelations of Wasserman’s 2003 emails with Maxwell, several musicians and athletes — led by pop artist Chappell Roan and soccer star Abby Wambach — said that, to stay true to their values, they would leave the agency then known as Wasserman.

Wasserman apologized to his staff for “past personal mistakes” and said he would sell the agency.

He had limited dealings with Epstein, flying on the financier’s jet along with former President Clinton for a September 2002 humanitarian trip through Africa.

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Wasserman, a prolific Clinton fundraiser whose legendary grandfather, Hollywood titan Lew Wasserman, helped the Democrat win the 1992 presidential election, was joined on Epstein’s jet by his then-wife, Laura, actor Kevin Spacey, Epstein, Maxwell — who was convicted of sexual abuse in 2021 — and others, including security agents.

The LA28 board’s executive committee unanimously voted to keep Wasserman as chairman, citing his “strong leadership” of the Games.

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Movie Reviews

Six 100-Word Movie Reviews

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Six 100-Word Movie Reviews

Pizza Movie (2026) Director: Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, Star: Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone

Somehow, I got through an hour of this movie. I was seconds away from turning off in the first fifteen minutes because of the juvenile humor. Pizza Movie is too silly, repetitive, and the characters are annoying. Stranger Things Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone star as college friends, Jack and Montgomery. College angles are rarely seen in films right now, and that’s the one saving grace of the film. Similar to high school, people are also trying to fit in. The story and visuals were too corny. You can only watch someone’s head exploding for so long without letting yours.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) Director: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, Stars: Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor-Joy

I never saw the first Super Mario Brothers Movie when it was out, but I heard it got positive reviews. My brother always loved playing Super Mario video games as a kid, and I’d watch him. I tagged along with my friends to see Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and it’s a cute and fun film. I like it when movies explore the video game world. The animation creates unique worlds and characters. The characters are split into their own storylines, and for me, I felt like it worked. It adds more action, especially for kids who are seeing the films.

Emily in Paris Season 5 (2025) Creator: Darren Star, Stars: Lily Collins and Ashley Park

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After a bright spot in season 4, I thought season 5 of Emily in Paris would continue its growth in the story and its protagonist, but no, it’s all drained out in the usual Emily (Lily Collins) mishaps. Ashley Park (Mindy) has become too good for this show. Emily and Mindy waste several opportunities because of their love lives. The whole relationship angle is ruining it. I don’t understand why Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) is still in the show. I thought writers learned their lesson, but by the last episode, they’re continuing to bring the past into an apparent season 6.

Sarah’s Oil (2025) Director: Cyrus Nowrasteh, Stars: Naya Desir-Johnson and Zachary Levi

There’s always history lurking right beneath our noses. Sarah’s Oil (2025) tells the true story of Sarah Rector, an Oklahoma-born African American girl who became the first black female millionaire in the U.S. Naya Desir-Johnson is fierce and driven as Sarah. Zachary Levi is also along for the ride as Bert, a man who helps Sarah. Kate (Bridget Regan) was another favorite character as an intelligent woman. Cyrus Nowrasteh was drawn to the subject for its story and its themes. Nowrasteh’s direction is compelling as he unearths a hidden story from history. The film is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Jack Goes Boating (2014) Director and Star: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Ryan

Jack Goes Boating (2014) didn’t quite work for me, largely because of its slow pace and uneven storytelling. The film stars the late Seymour Hoffman as Jack, who also directed the film. This was Hoffman’s first and only time in the directing chair. Amy Ryan also stars in the film, giving a solid performance. This was also based on a play that Hoffman starred in. Jack wants to participate in a swim championship. That’s hardly what the film is about, tracking other characters’ stories. While the film aims for quiet intimacy, it ultimately drags, making it an underwhelming viewing experience.

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You Kill Me (2016), Director: John Dahl, Stars: Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson

Meet You Kill Me (2016), yet another film that I found in the museum of underrated gems. The concept revolves around Frank (Ben Kingsley), a hitman, who is sent to an A.A. meeting to get his mind focused again. A different story happens, where Frank falls in love with Laurel (Tea Leoni). Leoni is one of my favorite actresses. It also stars the funny Luke Wilson. I liked the trio’s dynamics. You Kill Me is a mental health movie. It’s okay to make changes if you’re not happy. I recommended that you keep an eye out for this movie.

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Review: Trigger warning? ‘For Want of a Horse’ gives new meaning to the term ‘animal lover’

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Review: Trigger warning? ‘For Want of a Horse’ gives new meaning to the term ‘animal lover’

“For Want of a Horse,” a play by Olivia Dufault receiving its world premiere in an Echo Theater Company production at Atwater Village Theatre, wants to have a rational conversation about a taboo topic that can provoke instant outrage.

The subject is zoophilia, not to be confused with bestiality, though for many of us it will be a distinction without much of a difference.

Calvin (Joey Stromberg), a good-looking, mild-mannered married accountant, has harbored a secret for much of his life. He has a thing for horses. His erotic interest began at an early age, and all his efforts to lead a normal life have left him depressed and contemplating suicide.

His wife, Bonnie (Jenny Soo), is a permissive kindergarten teacher who’s having difficulty restraining a girl in her class who has discovered the joys of masturbation. Worried about her husband, she discovers through his browsing history that he’s once again visiting strange animal sites.

She suggests he keep a horse, explaining that she doesn’t want to end up a widow or divorcée. Calvin is taken aback by her generosity but has come to recognize that his preference is more than a kink. It’s part of his identity — and maybe the only part that makes his life seem worth living.

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Joey Stromberg and Jenny Soo in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.

(Cooper Bates)

A horse named Q-Tip (Griffin Kelly) enters the couple’s lives. A stable is secured, and the mare, who senses that something strange is going on, is indulged with apples and caresses.

Kelly, a statuesque presence in a dress, harness and boots, brings the horse to life with wild, unpredictable movements. The sheer size of the animal poses a threat to humans. One kick, as Q-Tip herself explains in one of her thought-bubble monologues, is capable of penetrating a steel wall. But controlling an animal’s food supply is an effective way of winning over its trust.

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Calvin has found support in the online zoophilia community. PJ (Steven Culp), a man whose current inamorata is a bichon frise, is considering moving to a country where zoophilia isn’t illegal. He’s tired of the shame and the secrecy. He’s proud of his attachment to pooch, even if his thing for dogs has cost him contact with his daughter and ex-wife.

Dufault doesn’t shy away from sexual details. For PJ, intimacy depends on peanut butter. Calvin describes the physical signals that reveal Q-Tip’s erotic satisfaction. The play occasionally descends into sitcom humor. (PJ says he’s considering creating a human-dog dating app called Rin Tin Tinder.) But mostly the subdued tone steers clear of sensationalism.

The production, directed by Elana Luo, is scrupulously well-acted by the four-person cast. Stromberg makes Calvin seem not only reasonable but surprisingly sensitive. Soo’s Bonnie sweetly embodies the excesses of a kind of progressive piety. As PJ, Culp gruffly embraces his role as the play’s polemical fire-starter. And Kelly’s Q-Tip, in the production’s most physically demanding performance, straddles the human-animal divide with theatrical aplomb.

Steven Culp, left, and Joey Stromberg in "For Want of a Horse" at the Echo Theater Company.

Steven Culp, left, and Joey Stromberg in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.

(Cooper Bates)

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The open-mindedness that Dufault, a trans playwright, brings to the play creates some dramatic slack. Possibly the same fear of making value judgments that has inhibited Bonnie from imposing common-sense discipline in her classroom has robbed “For Want of a Horse” of a propulsive point of view.

The play moves monotonously between Calvin and Bonnie’s bedroom and the stable. Scenic designer Alex Mollo has worked out an efficient way of shifting between these realms by employing the same set of wooden trunks. But the argument of the play doesn’t so much build as elapse.

Time takes its toll, and Calvin eventually has to make a decision. But the character who interested me most was Bonnie, whose reality is only glimpsed. The play tacitly uses her husband’s threat of suicide as a trump card. Zoophilia isn’t merely a fetish for Calvin but a nonnegotiable part of his identity.

This questionable assumption can be psychologically scrutinized not only from Calvin’s point of view but also from his wife’s. The play wants to have an intelligent debate, but it doesn’t want to interrogate certain political positions too skeptically.

At one point, Bonnie objects when Calvin compares his situation to that of homosexuality, but the conversation ends there. The reality is that the right wing has been making a similar claim, arguing that same-sex marriage opens the door to bestiality, polygamy and incest. “For Want of a Horse” inadvertently lends legitimacy to this line of reasoning.

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Griffin Kelly in "For Want of a Horse" at the Echo Theater Company.

Griffin Kelly in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.

(Cooper Bates)

Not that extremist positions should be off limits, but they ought to be more rigorously addressed. Similarly, Bonnie’s concern about the issue of consent — how can a horse say yes to intercourse with a human — is introduced only to be dismissed in a shrug of mild-mannered bothsidesism.

While watching “For Want of a Horse,” I recalled a program on PBS called “My Wild Affair” that wasn’t about zoophilia but about the problematic nature of human bonds with untamed animals. Relationships with a seal, an elephant and a rhino, for example — obsessive, protective, loving friendships — all seemed to end if not in outright tragedy, then in shattering heartbreak.

Q-Tip is rightfully given the play’s last word, and Kelly, an actor (HBO’s “The Book of Queer”), writer and comedian, is the production’s driving force. We can never know what’s inside this mare’s mind because Q-Tip’s brain has evolved so differently from our own. Kelly plays the anthropomorphic game while retaining some of the inscrutability of a four-legged creature.

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It is through language that we, as humans, traverse the chasm separating us from one another. That’s not possible with animals, even with our closest domestic companions. (Try explaining a necessary medical procedure to a cat.)

“For Want of a Horse” sets out to speak about the unspeakable, but its construction may be too tame for such a wild subject.

‘For Want of a Horse’

Where: Echo Theater Company, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, Mondays; 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 25

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Tickets: $15-$42.75

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (no intermission)

Info: echotheatercompany.com

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