Playwright Molly Smith Metzler scores with ‘Sirens’ on Netflix: L.A. arts and culture this week

“Sirens,” starring Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, Milly Alcock and Meghann Fahy, debuted over Memorial Day weekend as Netflix’s most-watched show with 16.7 million viewers. What many of those viewers might not have known: The series is based on a play.

Created by Molly Smith Metzler, “Sirens” is adapted from a 2011 one-act, “Elemeno Pea,” which Metzler wrote when she was at Juilliard. The play premiered that year as part of the 35th anniversary of the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville. It also staged a run at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa in 2012.

“Sirens” and “Elemeno Pea” are about a young woman who overcomes a tough childhood only to drop out of law school and become a personal assistant to a billionaire’s narcissistic wife. Cutting satire ensues when the girl’s street-smart sister, who believes her sibling is being devoured whole by the 1 percent, intervenes to save her.

The show is a meditation on class and what might best be described as a distinctly American caste system — one in which people from disadvantaged or working-class backgrounds can achieve the trappings of success without ever truly being accepted in the rarefied rooms they occupy. Metzler knows of what she writes — having ascended from the world of struggling playwrights to that of well-paid television writers while raising a young daughter. She was lucky to come into her own during the era of peak TV when the strong storytelling skills of playwrights were in high demand for screen projects.

Portrait of Molly Smith Metzler at her home in Silver Lake.

(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

I first met Metzler in 2018 when I wrote about the West Coast premiere of her play “Cry It Out” at Atwater Village Theatre. She is warm and welcoming, a devoted mother and a savvy businesswoman and artist. At that time Metzler had already written for the TV shows “Casual” and “Shameless,” but in 2021 she broke through as a showrunner for the Netflix limited series “Maid,” which she adapted from Stephanie Land’s bestselling memoir. The Emmy-nominated show became the streamer’s fourth-most watched show that year.

Metzler recruited fellow playwrights Bekah Brunstetter and Marcus Gardley to write for “Maid.” Brunstetter, whose 2015 play, “The Cake,” ran at La Jolla Playhouse, also penned an episode of “Sirens.” The remaining four episodes were written by Metzler and her husband, Colin McKenna, also a playwright.

When “Elemeno Pea” first ran at South Coast Rep, Metzler was 33 and living with McKenna in Brooklyn Heights. The Kingston, N.Y.-native told The Times in an interview that the play was based on her own experience getting to know an outrageously rich woman on Martha’s Vineyard during a post-collegiate stay to gather material for future plays.

Back then Metzler told The Times: “I don’t want to be a screenwriter. I might write screenplays to pay my rent — most playwrights do — but I am compelled by how hard this art is. I love the challenge of it.”

Metzler has now achieved a rare kind of success: She gets the best of both worlds.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, binge-watching my way through Metzler’s oeuvre. Here’s your weekly dose of arts news.

On our radar this week

“World of the Terracotta Warriors” has opened at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, with more than a hundred artifacts dating from 2300 BC and discovered in Shimao, one of the earliest walled cities in China. Life-size ceramic warrior sculptures are on view with jade, gold and bronze relics in an exhibition organized by the Bowers with the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Heritage Administration, Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center and Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum of the People’s Republic of China. This special exhibition costs $11-$29. The museum is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays, through Oct. 19. bowers.org

Culture news

President Trump announced Friday that he is firing Kim Sajet, the longtime director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, for being “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.” The move is Trump’s latest push to align national arts institutions with his political agenda. In February, he dismissed much of the Kennedy Center board to have himself appointed chairman. In March, he targeted the Smithsonian Institution by issuing an executive order demanding an end to federal funding for exhibitions and programs based on racial themes that “divide Americans.”

Times music critic Mark Swed was in New York to gauge the reception to Gustavo Dudamel, a year ahead of his official start at music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic. The verdict: So far, so good.

The SoCal scene

Nadya Tolokonnikova at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in L.A. in 2023.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

‘Police State’ at MOCA

Nadya Tolokonnikova, a founding member of the Russian all-female punk band Pussy Riot and a prominent political activist, is staging a durational performance piece at Museum of Contemporary Art titled “Police State.” The work, which runs from Thursday to June 14, consists of Tolokonnikova sitting at a bare wooden table inside of a corrugated steel structure resembling a Russian prison cell. She plans to stay in this artscape throughout the day and night— eating, drinking and even going to the restroom. She will occasionally perform what the museum is calling “soundscapes” — a mix of lullabies, screaming and noise rock. Visitors to the museum can watch her through peepholes and via feed from a security camera. Tolokonnikova’s performance is born from hard, personal experience. She spent nearly two years in a Russian prison after being arrested for a 2012 performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

‘The Reservoir’ at the Geffen

The world-premiere play “The Reservoir” by Jake Brasch is in rehearsals at Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. The heartfelt comedy finds two hilarious grandparents, Shrimpy and Bev, helping their grandson Josh navigate life during a difficult stretch of time. Veteran actor Lee Wilkof plays Shrimpy, and the Geffen recently shared an interesting tidbit of trivia with The Times about him: In 1982 Wilkof originated the role of Seymour in the Workshop of the Players Art Foundation’s off-off-Broadway world premiere of “Little Shop of Horrors” alongside Ellen Greene as Audrey. The show soon debuted off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre in the East Village. In 1983 Wilkof and Greene performed the musical at Geffen Playhouse, which was called the Westwood Playhouse at the time. “The Reservoir” marks Wilkof’s return to the building and its stage. Here’s a clip of Wilkof and Greene performing “Somewhere That’s Green” and “Suddenly Seymour” on “The Tonight Show” in 1983.

Tarot fest

Interested in tarot? A show with the lengthy and informative title of “Tarot in Time: A Collection of Rare & Out of Print Decks and Original Tarot Art,” recently opened at the Philosophical Research Society. It’s part of the inaugural Los Angeles Festival of Tarot, and it’s scheduled to run through June 29.

And last but not least

A mom-nod of approval for MOCA for providing children with worksheets relating to its Olafur Eliasson exhibition “Open” at the Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo. The worksheets, which are handed out with a pencil and clipboard, give kids a series of questions relating to each piece of art, encouraging them to engage on a deeper level than they would if they were just cruising through with parents. Finished worksheets can be exchanged at the front desk for a prize: a cute pin that reads “Art Is for Everyone.”