Pig Iron Theatre Company and the Wilma Theater present Poor Judge

Based on its initial success, the Wilma scheduled a valedictory run as part of its 2025-2026 season. But the universe threw the creatives a curveball when Dito van Reigersberg, the show’s co-conceiver and lead performer, had to withdraw on the eve of previews, owing to a recurrence of cancer.

That the production soldiered on at all is a testament to the power of performance as a collective act and healing ritual. That Poor Judge remains as good as ever—if not better—is a tribute to the thoughtful, detailed work of van Reigersberg, Eva Steinmetz, and Alex Bechtel, who use the music of Aimee Mann to make cogent points about the fickle nature of celebrity and the depths of loneliness.

Chasing solace in music

Van Reigersberg is a Mann superfan—as am I, full disclosure—and he began piecing together the elements that would become Poor Judge while finding solace in her music after a breakup. Mann’s music investigates the seedy underbelly of sunny Southern California, and it provides a brilliant soundtrack to explore disillusionment and dissociation amid a Hollywood backdrop.

The compact plot focuses on a narrator-like figure called the Lead Performer—originally played by van Reigersberg and here essayed by Pax Ressler—whose partner jilts them shortly after they arrive in Los Angeles. Unable to take solace in the music of their favorite artist, they begin to see Aimee Mann everywhere they look—particularly on the set of a melodramatic movie that seems to replicate their personal life.

Uncanny balance

Costume designer Nikki Delhomme outfits Ressler and the rest of the ensemble in impish Mann signifiers: wavy blond wigs, boxy black-framed glasses, feathery blouses. The style choices communicate an unspoken obsession while still allowing the actors to retain elements of their own personal style, creating the right uncanny balance. As Ressler’s character moves through the uncertainty of a Hollywood career and a lonely life, it becomes difficult to tell just where the lines blur between fiction and reality.

Bechtel’s arresting musical arrangements plumb new depths in Mann’s catalog, with an a cappella choral arrangement of the title song painting a particularly harrowing picture of the romantic balance between hopefulness and heartbreak. The company is composed of actor-musicians who do yeoman’s work on a variety of instruments, and the inclusion of upright bass (played by Josh Machiz) and cello (Justin Yoder) add a mournful melancholy to many numbers.

The ensemble is strong to a person, but the clarion voices of Ressler, Emily Bate, Izzy Sazak, and Jackie Soro must be among the best heard in a Philadelphia musical theater production this decade. Credit to sound designer Chris Sannino for not overamplifying them.

Standout work

Pig Iron bills Poor Judge as a work of “dance-theater cabaret,” and while Steinmetz and choreographer Chelsea Murphy craft striking stage pictures and physical tableaux, at times I wished for less dialogue and more of a language through movement. Some scenes surrounding the fictitious movie come across as overly arch and might be helped rather than hindered by abstraction. Still, the work of Maria Feuereisen (sets), Maria Shaplin and Krista Smith (lighting), and Michael Long (video design) contribute a wonderful sense of mounting unease to the proceedings.

Near the beginning, the Lead Performer cites their favorite Mann lyric, from “Invisible Ink”: “I feel like a ghost who’s trying to move your hands over some Ouija board in the hopes that I can spell out my name.” The name and imprimatur of Pig Iron at its best is all over Poor Judge, which is easily their strongest new work in a decade. So too is the name and vision of van Reigersberg, which shines even in his absence.