Under Pressure: Philly Actor Pax Ressler Quickly Steps in to Fill Some Very Big Shoes at the Wilma’s Latest Show
Just days before the opening of Poor Judge at the Wilma, actor Pax Ressler took over the lead in a rare and triumphant theatrical feat.
Pax Ressler in Poor Judge / Photography by Johanna Austin
In the theater world, “crunch time” usually means late rehearsals and a creeping sense of panic as opening night hurtles toward you. But for Philly actor Pax Ressler, it meant stepping into the lead of a critically acclaimed, award-winning show just days before opening night. For ten performances through January 25th, Poor Judge — the experimental jukebox musical conceived by Pig Iron Theatre Company co-founder and local drag legend Dito van Reigersberg (aka Martha Graham Cracker) and set to the songs of alt-rock icon Aimee Mann — returns to the Wilma Theater with one extraordinary twist: instead of starring van Reigersberg, who is suddenly unavailable due to a health condition, the central role is now being performed by Ressler, an award-winning composer and actor who had barely a week to prepare for one of the most demanding substitutions Philly theater has seen in years.
And it’s a triumph.
You may have caught Poor Judge when it debuted at the 2024 Philadelphia Fringe Festival to wild critical and audience applause. The idea for the “dance-theater cabaret” had been conceived by van Reigersberg two years before but was put on hold when he was diagnosed with leukemia. It was then developed throughout 2023 with the help of director Eva Steinmetz while van Reigersberg underwent treatment, eventually premiering at the Wilma Theater in September 2024. It went on to receive rave reviews, nine Barrymore Award nominations (winning three), and a cosign from Mann herself, who attended and called it “delightful.” “From the moment the show closed, maybe a month after,” Steinmetz says of Poor Judge’s original run, she and van Reigersberg were considering ways to bring it back to the stage.
Alex Bechtel (left) and Pax Ressler in Poor Judge
“Pig Iron has been looking for opportunities to take this show on the road. Ultimately, the dream is to take it to New York and L.A. We’ve talked to folks in D.C.,” she says. “The producing landscape and the funding landscape is really shifting right now, and opportunities for regional theaters to go on tour for experimental work are dwindling. But this [the Wilma show] is one of many different avenues that Pig Iron was looking for to remount the show, to keep it alive.”
And so the Wilma partnered with the company to bring the Poor Judge back for its current mid-January run. Much of the original cast and crew signed on to return, including music director Alex Bechtel (whose arrangements of Mann’s songs earned a Barrymore Award), choreographer Chelsea Murphy, set designer Maria Feuereisen, and all of the actors portraying the six-person ensemble of Aimee Mann replicas, dressed in her unmistakable blonde hair and black glasses.
“We call them ‘the Aimee Men’,” says Steinmetz.
Alex Bechtel, Josh Machiz, Jackie Soro, Izzy Sazak, Justin Yoder, and Pax Ressler in Poor Judge
But on January 8th, a statement by the theater’s co-artistic-director Dan Rothenberg announced startling news: van Reigersberg would be stepping away from the production, due to medical complications that had recently emerged. Rather than canceling the show so close to opening night (tickets had been selling fast), Ressler would step in to replace van Reigersberg.
Though Steinmetz and Bechtel described adapting the show to a new lead as a “breezy process,” it was unquestionably the aforementioned crunch time. Because of scheduling and budgeting constraints, Bechtel explains, their first rehearsal in over a year wouldn’t be able to happen until January 1st – and their first preview would be on the 13th – giving the team less than two weeks to prepare. Things were even tighter, though, for Ressler, who had further schedule constraints and was unable to join rehearsals until the 6th. Luckily, late last year Ressler had been asked to memorize some of the script and songs in case a cast member got sick or dropped out. When van Reigersberg himself fell ill, he himself, along with Steinmetz and Bechtel, asked Ressler to come on as the lead for the entire run.
The request was an honor, says Ressler.
“To step into a track of Dito’s — who is just a legendary performer in Philly and, I would say, the most beloved performer in Philly — and try to allow the show to be possible in this new form, but also try to fill his gigantic shoes; that was the task that I was taking on,” Ressler says.
But neither Ressler, nor the rest of the cast and crew, cracked under the pressure. Other than this significant change to the cast, much of the writing and design of the show is the same as its original run, and reception from both new viewers and fans of van Reigersberg has been “enthusiastic,” Steinmetz says.
One of those rapt attendees was Stephanie Haynes, who’d seen the 2024 Fringe debut of Poor Judge and attended the Tuesday evening preview of its Wilma production.
“It was a pretty emotional experience to see the show again, without Dito, but his fingerprints were still all over it,” says Haynes, a longtime fan of van Reigersberg’s. “Every cast member was fantastic, and Pax was really exceptional filling in for Dito with such a short on-ramp. It’s a true testament to the strength of the show’s concept, music, cast, and writing.”
This, I can confirm: At the end of Tuesday’s preview, Ressler and the cast bowed to a several-minute-long standing ovation. In a situation defined by uncertainty and impossibly tight timelines, Poor Judge had pulled off a rare theatrical feat: surviving crunch time — and sticking the landing on the other side, victorious.
Through January 25th at the Wilma Theater.
