The party starts on the sidewalk.
Before you push through the doors of the Grand Annex on Sixth Street, before you find your seat or order your tiki drink, you have already entered the world of Josh Agle, better known as the artist “Shag.” Banners on the street showcase his characters. There is a red carpet. Performers outside greet you with the signature mid-century cool that has defined Shag’s art for three decades: elongated figures, knowing smiles, cocktails held at impossible angles. By the time you cross the threshold, you are already a suspect.
That last part is literal. Shag With a Twist, opening this month at the Grand Annex, is a murder-mystery musical, a 1960s Tupperware party gone wrong, investigated in retrospect by a pair of true-crime show hosts named Twinkie and Bun. The cast features a bumbling inspector, a fez-wearing monkey, and Kitty, a feline-styled seductress eager for everyone’s attention. Every badge, prop, and architectural beehive hairdo was designed by Shag himself, down to the toy mouse a character carries in one scene. During production, he received a message: ‘We need something to put Kitty in a playful mood, a toy mouse perhaps.’ He could, and he did.
Working out of Southern California since the 1990s, Shag built his following on images that evoke a memory of a world that never quite existed. His paintings are flat planes of saturated color, sharp lines, glamorous people in tiki bars and space-age lounges, all radiating a sophisticated melancholy that is easy to overlook because of their stunning surfaces.
His collectors are devoted. His imagery appears on everything from enamel pins to hotel lobbies. The style is so codified that it operates almost like a visual language: You recognize it immediately and understand, without explanation, exactly what kind of world you’re in.
The challenge Cindy Bradley set for herself, roughly 22 years ago, was to make that world move.
Bradley is the founder and artistic director of San Pedro City Ballet, the same studio where, in the early 1990s, she discovered a young Misty Copeland at the Boys & Girls Club and offered her a scholarship. She encountered Shag’s work on a cocktail napkin at a Hollywood memorabilia show, and she describes the moment the way she describes touching Copeland’s foot: as a vision, something that came over her. She knew immediately she needed to bring it to life. She went to a packed gallery opening in Palm Springs, determined to meet him. The line wound around the building. She waited through dinner and came back to find it had grown. She talked her way past the door.
It took another six months of outreach to get Shag’s attention. What finally worked was a video of Bradley singing in her 1980s garage band, The Wigs, all surf guitar and ‘60s pop energy. Shag had been in a band himself back in the ‘80s. He said yes.
The show they built together opened in Los Angeles in 2005, ran for about 15 weeks, then moved to Las Vegas for nine months, then went quiet for years before being revived for Palm Springs’ Modernism Week. Now it has landed in San Pedro, in the neighborhood where Bradley has spent her career, in a room that turns out to be ideal for the experiment they’ve been running. With only about 150 seats, the Grand Annex is intimate enough that the aesthetic can saturate the space without overwhelming it. There is no safe distance between the audience and the stage. You are in the painting, not observing it.
“It’s immersive,” Shag says, searching for the right framing. “People use the word retro, but to me the show exists in the past, the present, and the future.”
What he’s describing is the essential quality that makes his art, and this production, unusual. His paintings don’t depict a specific historical moment so much as a feeling about one: the eternal cocktail hour, the party that is always just beginning, suspended in amber and backlit in teal. Staging it creates a paradox. You can’t freeze time on a stage. Real performers breathe and sweat and generate genuine emotion. The question is whether the aesthetic can survive contact with all that sincerity.
Bradley’s answer, developed over two decades and multiple productions, seems to be: mostly yes, with adjustments. The show originally left its murder mystery deliberately oblique: Shag thought it was obvious who the killer was and was surprised when audiences did not find it quite so obvious. Subsequent productions added narrator characters, more dialogue, and a slightly clearer throughline. The party got better at explaining itself. “In the beginning,” Bradley recalls, “we had people coming back over and over trying to figure it out.” She does not say this as a complaint.
For Shag, the most rewarding aspect of the production has become its independence. “It’s a freestanding entity,” he says. “It’s a piece of pop culture with a life of its own.” He doesn’t see himself as the parent of the show, exactly. More like a distant relative, watching it thrive without him.
For Bradley, the most rewarding thing is simpler. She wants to sit next to Shag and watch him watch the show. She wants to know he’s pleased.
San Pedro, too, seems pleased. Ticket sales are strong; people are coming from outside the neighborhood, which is exactly the point. Bradley is already discussing the possibility of bringing the show to West Harbor next year.
She discusses the after-party at The Whale & Ale, where the cast will join the audience, blurring the line between performers and attendees a bit more. She also mentions the nearby restaurants offering a 10 percent discount to ticket holders before the show: Compagnon Wine Bistro, The Whale & Ale, The Majestic, and San Pedro Brewing Company. Supported in part by a grant from Arts United San Pedro and the San Pedro Historic Waterfront District, the production feels like exactly the kind of thing the neighborhood has been working toward—a reason to visit downtown, dress up, and make a night of it.
It is, when you think about it, exactly what a Shag painting promises: the sensation of already belonging to the party. spt
Shag With a Twist runs Saturdays: April 11, May 30, and June 6, at the Grand Annex, 434 W. 6th Street, in Downtown San Pedro. Audiences are encouraged to dress tiki, pin-up, or 1960s mod. Click here for tickets and info, or visit their Instagram @shagwithatwistmusical.
Aaron McKenzie is a director, photographer, and producer who has called San Pedro home since 2014. Whether he's exploring the town’s local history, its arts scene, economics, or maritime industries, Aaron’s writings for San Pedro Today are just his selfish excuse to learn about his fellow San Pedrans and this cool place we call home. Follow his adventures on Instagram at @aaronwmckenzie.
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