Rorschach Fest, Inkblot C

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Open Fist Theatre Company
Through April 5 [NOTE: Remaining performances suspended due to COVID-19]

In a Rorschach test, an individual is presented with a series of abstract images and asked what they see. Their answers are used by the administering psychiatrist or psychologist to gain insight into that person’s state of mind.

Open Fist Theater Company’s current production is titled Rorschach Fest. Presented as three separate programs, it’s a series of short plays by John O’Keefe, Harold Pinter, Daniel MacIvor and Caryl Churchill — four playwrights widely recognized for the distinctive style and/or content of their work.

“Inkblot C” features two plays by Churchill, a writer I’ve always admired for her strong feminist themes and razor-sharp deconstruction of Establishment hypocrisies. Open Fist has staged several of Churchill’s plays over the years, memorably so, in my opinion. These productions — of Cloud Nine, Fen and Mad Forest — are mentioned in the program by Martha Demson, the company’s artistic director and the director of the first play on this program, This is a Chair. Demson notes how these past productions coincided with her own personal milestones and those of the company.

Unlike these full-length works, This is a Chair, the first half of this program, consists of a series of brief sketches, each portraying two or three people interacting in an everyday situation — but accompanied, rather enigmatically, by a title referencing some major event or trend in the world at large. For example, a couple (Alexander Wells and Debba Rofheart) meet up for a date that’s swiftly aborted when the woman informs the man (who, anxious to please, has brought flowers) that she’s gotten her days confused and must leave for her date with someone else. This sketch is labeled (with chyron on the back wall) “The War in Bosnia.”

Or, two thuggish men (Neil Oktay and Schulyer Mastain) come after their sister’s (Emma Bruno) boyfriend for no discernible reason other than pure malice (“The Labour Party’s Slide to the Right”). In another, two women (AlgeRita Wynn and Carmella Jenkins) discuss an outpatient medical procedure and whether it’s better to use an anesthetic or no (“Animal Conservation and Third World Economies: the Ivory Trade”). In a fourth, a husband (Art Hall) and wife (Dionna Veremis), their frustration palpable, attempt to persuade their child (Jenkins) to eat (“Pornography and Censorship,” but when the scene is replayed, the title is “The Peace Process in Northern Ireland”).

Under Demson’s direction, the acting, presented on a spare set (Jan Munroe) is able but uninvolving: The piece is fragmented and the individual segments don’t begin to approach a catharsis. As for the cryptic chyrons, as with most Rorschach images, I have no idea what they mean.

Here We Go is an edgy play about death that’s directed by Matthew McCray. It’s a cogent work but undermined by haphazard staging — the actors’ movements appear random and improvised — and by a weak pivotal performance. There are three segments. In the first, a group of people gather at the wake of a newly deceased acquaintance and engage in social palaver and personal reminiscence, not all of it kind. Their conversation is broken up by brief statements from each individual who, stepping away from the group and speaking directly to the audience, recount how and when he or she died.

The second part (from a literary standpoint, the most striking element of the program) is an extended monologue, an imagining of the experience of a person (Alberto Isaac), who has just died, beginning with the sensation of tumbling down a long tunnel (lighting in red and gold hues by Matt Richter, accompanying sound by Tim Labor) through a series of ruminations about the vagaries of living and uncertain thoughts about what lies ahead (would there be reincarnation and if so, into what?). It’s a wonderful piece of writing but unfortunately it’s “performed” — there’s no eye contact with the audience nor any sign that the performer has internalized his role in any way — something that’s up to the director to address.

The final sequence is an affecting delineation of the debilitation of old age, as Isaac wordlessly portrays a solitary infirm old man struggling through his daily routine — sad intimations, for many of us, of what’s to come.

Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater; for performance schedule, go to www.openfist.org; [NOTE: Remaining performances suspended due to COVID-19]. For tickets: https://openfist.secure.force.com/ticket. Running time: approximately 55 minutes with no intermission.

Revenge Song: A Vampire Cowboys Creation

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Geffen Playhouse
Through March 8

Born around 1673, Julie D’Aubigny was an extraordinary women who defied the gender expectations of her time to live entirely on her own terms. D’Aubigny’s unconventional life is the basis for Revenge Song, a play by Qui Nguyen, familiar to local audiences for his compelling award-winning play Vietgone and its sequel Poor Yella Rednecks, both based on the immigrant experience of his Vietnamese parents. A wild musical burlesque, commissioned by the Geffen Playhouse and performed by the New York–based Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company, of which Nguyen is co-artistic director, Revenge Song pivots on an inspired premise but doesn’t deliver on its promise. Nor does it take a whole lot of deconstruction to figure out why; directed by Vampire Cowboys’ other artistic director, Robert Ross Parker, the performances, with a single exception, are all bluster, lacking that kernel of truth that even the silliest parody needs to make it spark.

First a few words about the historical iconoclast at the nub of the story. Her father, who worked for a prominent French count as a trainer of court pages, educated his daughter along with his pupils, meaning she learned how to read, draw and (most importantly for this story) fence, a skill unheard of for women at the time. D’Aubigny became a terrific swordswoman, reportedly using her expertise to defend other women against the unwanted harassment of men. And, she was not only exceptional with a blade — she was also a celebrated opera singer, lauded for her splendid voice. D’Aubigny also openly had affairs with both men and women; her last love was a Marquise, a favorite of the Dauphin, with whom she escaped to Belgium to live happily until her lover’s death. (She herself died prematurely at 33, the circumstances of her passing obscure.)

Rowdy and raucous by intent, the production straddles time periods, with sword fighting, rock music, puppetry and slapstick, among other elements, all tossed into an untidy mix. Jessica Shay’s colorful costumes (the best part of the production) are part period, part contemporary, part circus-theatrical, while Nick Francone’s scenic design suggests the walls of a 17^th century city albeit tracked with modern-day graffiti. The production’s Julie (Margaret Odette), however, seems very much a person of our times, as she whines and pleads with her dad (Noshir Dalal) to allow her to work in the stables, ’till he finally agrees. After that we have Julie awkwardly discovering the pleasures of same-sex love with a girl named Emily (Beth Hawkes), sent to a convent by her stern father for refusing to enter an arranged marriage. Persuading a wary abbess (Amy Kim Wasschke) to admit her, Julie goes undercover in the convent and hatches a scheme to free her lady love that involves burning the convent down, a scene that aligns with actual historical accounts. In Nguyen’s re-imagining, she’s aided by Albert (Eugene Young) a young nobleman who’s smitten with her and pursues their relationship even as Julie makes clear to him it’s Emily that she wants. He also abets her in her quest for revenge against the noble (Tom Myers) who molested her as a young girl (Me Too in spades!).

Juxtaposing the old and the modern, classical images with contemporary lingo, can be a recipe for both insight and laughs. The songs, while not memorable, are good enough. Nguyen’s script, with its fair measure of acumen when it comes to human behavior, offers the possibility for a fun evening, at minimum. But Parker seems to have invested all his directorial energy in the staging and the riffs, with none left for the actors. As the pivotal personality, our link to what is surely an inspiring feminist figure, Odette is disappointing; she offers little soul behind the strident voice and swaggering bravado, and it’s impossible to care about her character. The other performances are equally one-dimensional with the exception of Hawkes, whose flirtatious and ultimately fickle Emily exhibits the only glimmer of truth in the show. This ensemble may elsewhere be capable of better things, but the bottom line here is a jejune style of performance that is simply not engaging.

Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood; Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 3 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. & 7 p.m.; through Mar. 8. https://geffenplayhouse.org. Running time: approximately two hours with an intermission.

Until the Flood 

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Center Theatre Group, Kirk Douglas Theatre 
Through February 23

RECOMMENDED:

The fatal shooting of black teenager Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson in 2014 cast a harsh spotlight on the community of Ferguson, Missouri. Brown’s killing (six bullets in the front) provoked riots and unrest, stirring righteous rage within a black community long subject to abuse and intimidation from an all-white police force (supported in turn by an all-white city council). The riots were countered with tank and military style weaponry purchased from the federal government. Unable to corroborate the account of the shooting by Brown’s companion — that he’d been approaching Wilson with his hands up, prepared to surrender — a local grand jury declined to indict. Meanwhile, a report by the DOJ also exonerated the officer — but that same report went on to note the systemic violation in Ferguson of African Americans’ rights: that they were twice as likely to be stopped, searched, cited and arrested as white people, the name of the game being the accumulation of revenue by the city, ultimately on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable.

The documentary film Whose Streets, co-directed by Sabaah Folayan (a filmmaker from South Central L.A.) and Damon Davis, is a passionate telling of this story from the vantage point of the oppressed. You can’t tell this tale of institutionalized terror too often, however, and in 2015 the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis commissioned playwright/performer Dael Orlandersmith to develop a play around these events. Orlandersmith interviewed hundreds of people, both black and white, and put together Until the Flood, an exploratory piece made up of a series of monologues, each a fictional composite of a citizen of Ferguson (or its environs). Each monologue relays this person’s point of view — and by extension the view of an American from anywhere — of community and race.

Directed by Neel Keller, Until the Flood is a palette of grays, as well as a map that tracks the fault lines and schisms within families as well as races. One of its most poignant themes is the “self-hate” among its victims that racism can breed. Louisa, a black retired schoolteacher, grew up chafing at her truncated horizons; she got up and out, attending City College in New York City and changing her life — but returning to the community was subject not only to belittlement by a white shopkeeper but also to the scorn of the shopkeeper’s black employee, another young woman like Louisa herself. The incident brought on an even more painful altercation with her parents, who refused to condemn the other girl, understanding as they did how internalized racism can be as destructive as the laws that keep it in place.

Orlandersmith also portrays Rusty, a white cop with 30 years on the force, who recounts his confrontations with young black men — perceiving their fear and anger and the nothing-to-lose despairing bravado that seems to dare him to shoot them. Rusty is ambivalent about Brown’s death; he knows there are cops on the force that abuse their power and shouldn’t wield guns, but on the other hand fellow cops are “brothers,” and he ultimately comes down on Wilson’s side.

Other characters include Hassan, a defiant teen who might be one of the youths Rusty faces off with; Connie, a white schoolteacher whose viewpoint — that the shooting was a dual-edged tragedy, for both Brown and Wilson — enrages her long time black friend and colleague (“Brown is dead!”) and ends their friendship; Reuben, a black barber contemptuous of the college activists come to save him; and Dougray, the landlord from Appalachia whose hard-knocks up-by-his-bootstraps story segues to a screed of hate.

The set (Takeshi Kata) is spare in the playing area, a couple of chairs, a lamp, positioned variously about the stage; around the rim are flowers, candles and other makings of the kind of memorial that people are wont to leave at the site of a tragedy. Nicholas Hussong’s projections are vivid abstracts in fiery red, blue and green to suggest the turmoil of time, place and event.

The writing itself is simple, eloquent, straight-to-the-heart storytelling, best suited to an intimate venue. Some of the power of these stories may be lost to the audience member seated, as I was, a distance from the proscenium, where Orlandersmith’s face — and the changes she undergoes as she shifts from one character to the next — are often too indistinct to be appreciated.

Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City; Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 p.m., Sun., 1 p.m. & 6:30 p.m.; through Feb. 23. https://centertheatregroup.org. Running time: 70 minutes with no intermission.

West Adams

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Skylight Theatre
Through March 8

In September 2019, Investopedia published an article entitled “Six Gentrifying Neighborhoods in Los Angeles,” with West Adams at the top of the list. The writer mentioned the neighborhood’s proximity to Metro’s Expo Line, and the possibility of nabbing a property for $300 thou at a time when prices for L.A. housing are skyrocketing with no end in sight. Three months earlier, the L.A. Business Journal reported with equal enthusiasm that businesses were “relocating to the suddenly trendy area.”

Gentrification serves as the backdrop for Penelope Lowder’s prickly percipient satire. Developed in the Skylight Theatre’s Playwright’s Lab, West Adams deals not only with racism, but also with the downside perils of the MeToo Movement — an imperative response to the long-time violation of women’s personhood that can unfortunately be exploited by unscrupulous people for their own vengeful ends. And though the script could benefit from some tinkering — there are back story details that might be clarified — West Adams overall is a savvy, satisfying play, spotlighting the toxic ilk that still poisons our fractious American communities.

Directed by Michael A. Shepperd, the story develops around two 30-something couples: Mike (Clayton Farris), a self-congratulatory white guy who makes a living selling bounce houses, and his wife Julie (Jenny Soo) a Chinese American woman whose Dad foots the bill for both their home and for Mike’s business. Mike and Julie hang out with Peruvian-born Edward (Andres M Bagg), Mike’s employee whom he is sponsoring for legal status, and Edward’s pregnant wife Sarah (Blaize Allison), who is fond of quoting scripture and conceals her piranha-like leanings behind a thinly concealed decorum.

When the play begins, the four are preparing a rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” that they hope to perform at the upcoming neighborhood fest — a matter of great importance to Mike in particular, who envisions it as a step in his personal advancement within the community (meetings with Wesson, lunch with Garcetti). But Mike’s chances to score are diminished after a fabulously affluent black family moves in across the street and takes control of both the neighborhood council and the event at which the four of them had wished to shine. For all except Edward, this change in the neighborhood landscape is a critical turn that foments barely concealed envy and ill-will. The stakes escalate sharply after Sarah crudely criticizes a group trip to the African-American museum as inappropriate for kids who, she says, would be better-served viewing placid landscapes by Renoir. The matron across the road is understandably affronted; thereafter, the shit hits the fan, as the foursome plot to destroy the well-being of these strangers whom they perceive as having usurped their lives.

A plethora of exposition means that West Adams takes a couple of scenes to get off the ground; once it does, however, it stays smartly on point, serving up knowing portraits of people whose duplicity drives them to destroy others. And Lowder’s highlighting of an ugly distortion of the MeToo agenda, in tandem with her skewering of bigotry, makes this timely burlesque of spiteful human behavior seem twice as potent.

But while the play is on target, the performances (so far, that is, I saw this on opening night) are less so. Striving for a crisp tone and a fleet pace, Shepperd and crew haven’t yet shaped these characters with enough nuance or dimension. Both Farris as the unlikable, self-centered Mike, and Baggs as the more sensitive foil Edward, serve the play’s themes but haven’t a life of their own. Soo, a performer who excels in projecting entitlement (as she did in Echo Theater Company’s production of Gloria by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ in 2018) brings a little more texture to the guileful Julie, but I still wanted more. Only Allison, whose Sarah parades her pregnancy while telepathing the instincts of a toothsome shark, really owns her role.

Skylight Theatre, 1816 ½ Vermont Ave., Los Feliz; Fri.-Sat., 8:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; Mon., 8 p.m.; through Mar. 28. (866) 811-4111, atctix.org or https://SkylightTix.com. Running time: 80 minutes with no intermission.

The Last Ship

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Center Theatre Group
Through February 16

The Last Ship is a good match for anyone with powerful empathy for the working-class men and women whose livelihoods over the past 50 years have been devastated by ruthless corporatism. It’s probably an agreeable one for theatergoers who, in their restless rebellious youth, may have pulled up roots to venture out into the world, leaving friends and family behind. And the show is a fortuitous opportunity for fans of Sting, the internationally famous British musician who birthed the idea behind it, wrote the score and lyrics, and is featured among the ensemble.

Set in Wallsend, a town in northeast England, the story draws on aspects of Sting’s youth; Wallsend is where he grew up, within (by his own account) “spitting distance” of a shipyard, watching the shipbuilders come and go every day while trying to figure out how he might craft for himself another kind of life.

The time is 1986. Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan’s British counterpart, is prime minister. A proponent of trickle-down economics, “Iron Lady” Thatcher took an axe to the welfare state, while promoting deregulation and the privatization of state-owned companies and gutting trade unions. In the story, a Thatcher proxy (Annie Grace) accompanies a shipyard owner (Sean Kearns) on the occasion of his announcement to the workers that the yard is ceasing operation, and they will have no choice but to accept lower wages as unskilled workers or be without jobs altogether. Sting plays Jackie, the shipyard foreman, who attempts to shepherd his bewildered angry colleagues through the pain and betrayal of this inevitable transition.

The trials and tribulations of the workers are juxtaposed with a love story between one of the town’s prodigal sons, Gideon (Oliver Savile as adult Gideon, Joseph Peacock in his adolescence), who took to the sea rather than become a shipyard worker like his father, and Meg, (Frances McNamee as adult Meg, Jade Sophia Vertannes in her adolescence), the pregnant sweetheart he left behind. After he left, Meg gave birth to a daughter, Ellen (Sophie Reid), then went on to become a local businesswoman, owner of a pub and several other enterprises. She is understandably furious at Gideon for abandoning her and then popping up 17 years later, wanting to pick up where they left off. Ellen, also ticked off at her dad, is preparing to leave home, guitar in hand and dreams of a life as a professional musician in mind.

Directed by Lorne Campbell (who also wrote the revised book; the original was penned by John Logan and Brian Yorkey), The Last Ship is a paean to a community and way of life that are no more. The shipyard workers from Sting’s childhood worked hard and drank hard and struggled financially but took great pride in their craft, passing that heritage onto their sons. The play pays equal tribute to their strong-spirited women, who take charge when the fortunes of their men run aground.

All this comes through in the songs — mellifluously rhymed, image-laden lyrics (though, given the accent, it helps to read them first), with an undertow of yearning, and melodies underlaid with folk and Scottish cadence. The harmonies are dense while the themes, strong and simple, are love, work and death.

A kindred power, however, is lacking in the book and the direction. With the actors, Campbell makes the most missteps, staging intimate scenes with the players positioned far apart. This is especially detrimental in exchanges between Gideon and Meg, and others between Gideon and Ellen, which are not terribly involving anyway, given Savile’s stock delivery and the zero-sum chemistry between him and McNamee. And the crisis in the lives of the workers might have been appreciated by us more keenly if these characters and their back stories had been more explicitly developed. We know where these people are coming from — we understand their fear and desperate bravado through the lyrics — but having it spotlighted with more depth outside the music would have invigorated the drama. The narrative also is awkward in critical places; it does not flow. Movement director Lucy Hinds’s choreography is unremarkable.

As to production values, there’s a somber imposing set (59 Productions) along with special effects that vividly intimate overcast skies and perilous storms. But tall dark constructs on either side of the stage, as well as steps front and center, serve no real function but do compress the playing area, a disadvantage with an 18-person ensemble, especially with choreographed musical numbers.

McNamee’s vocals in “It’s Not the Same Moon” and elsewhere are a highlight. Both she and Jackie Morrison as Peg White, Jackie’s wife, craft the most compelling portrayals.

In an interview (available on YouTube) Sting relayed what inspired The Last Ship — that, after a lifetime of fame and success he felt the need to return home, to pay a debt to this community where his roots lay. While this production is not everything it might be, the passion and heart that’s driven its creation is evident in the music, even as the story it spins is very much worth recalling.

The Ahmanson Theatre, 135 S. Grand Ave., Downtown L.A.; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 p.m.; Sun., 1 p.m. & 6:30 p.m.; through Feb. 16. (213) 972-4400 or www.centertheatregroup.org. Running time: two hours and 45 minutes with an intermission.

What the Constitution Means to Me

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Center Theatre Group
Through February 28

RECOMMENDED:

In attendance last Friday at What the Constitution Means to Me, Heidi Schreck’s droll insightful play directed by Oliver Butler at the Mark Taper Forum, I had the rare experience of bonding with the rest of my fellow audience members. Here we were, Americans (most, I wager, of the progressive persuasion) living in Los Angeles in 2020, listening to a play about the U.S. Constitution at a time when our identity and faith in our country is in unimaginable crisis. I’d been seized with a similar sensation of bonding when I attended Hamilton a couple of years back, mesmerized by the story of a brilliant fallible man, an immigrant, whose fate intertwined with the birth of our republic. This time the sensation was not as powerful or vivid — but it certainly was there. Schreck’s quasi-autobiographical piece lacks the breadth and brilliance of Lin-Manuel’s extraordinary musical and it goes on too long, but it’s nevertheless witty and on point as it explores the disconnect between our naïve hopes as citizens, nourished in our schoolrooms, and today’s bizarre and frightening reality.

Thirty years ago, the playwright was a 15-year-old high school student living in Wenatchee, Washington in the eastern part of the state when she developed into a zealous advocate for the United States Constitution. Encouraged by her mom, she began participating in debates sponsored by the American Legion, where teenage contestants were asked to weigh in on that seminal document and relate their discourse to some personal element in their lives.

Schreck won most of those contests, garnering enough money to put herself through college. Gradually, however, her views evolved, as her adult self began re-evaluating the document’s worth in the light of her own experience and those of the women in her family.

This touring production features Maria Dizzia, assuming the role that Schreck has played (on Broadway and in other venues) since 2017 — that of a funny, articulate middle-aged woman charting her evolution toward political dissent. Dizzia’s warmth and charisma are palpable from the start. Even seated toward the back of the mid-sized Taper, I felt as if this clever, unpretentious person was speaking directly to me.

The debate, which takes place in a room whose walls are lined with photos of legionnaires, is overseen by a dorky vet played by Mike Iveson (though he later sheds this persona and morphs into himself, confiding, at Maria’s behest, some of his own personal story). At some point, the flashbacks to this idealistic young polemicist circa the 1980s segue to other tales — the narrator’s difficult experience seeking out an abortion as a 21-year-old in her “abortion-free” community in eastern Washington state, and tales about the women in her family who suffered physical abuse from their spouses and whose lives were never ever their own. Her great-grandmother, for example, was a mail order bride from Germany who suffered “melancholia” and died in mental institution when she was 36. And her grandmother Bea, her mom’s mom, was abused by her husband and developed “Battered Woman Syndrome,” which led her to deny that the abuse was taking place.

The question playwright Schreck poses through these stories, which are intermingled with historical exposition and information about constitutional amendments is: Patriotic rhetoric aside, what is the actual value of the Constitution, which was written in the late 18^th century by and for propertied white males, the only people then deemed eligible to vote? How well, or how poorly, does this 230-year-old document serve the rest of us — women, immigrants, people of color, the poor (but in particular women!)? And what about questions that have emerged from circumstances never foreseen by these privileged founding fathers in their ironclad insular world — specifically a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body and her future.

About two thirds into the piece, Maria introduces Rosdely Ciprian, a contemporary teenage debater doing the circuit much as Heidi did 30 years earlier. Maria and Rosdely then launch into a master debate on whether the Constitution as we know it should be preserved or shelved, with the audience, encouraged to cheer or boo, as the final judge.

Now I imagine there are people for whom the mere thought of such descant is enough to make their eyelids droop. They should not be dissuaded by preconceived notions. As playwright, Schreck has filtered her personal journey of discovery into a vital work that challenges us to consider our heritage as Americans — to preserve the good and discard the bad. And she offers it up to us with an abundant supply of humor and humanity that unequivocally drives her message home.

The Mark Taper Forum at The Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown L.A.; Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2:30 p.m.; Sun., 1 p.m. & 6:30 p.m.; no Mon. performances; no public performances Tues., Feb. 11 & Wed., Feb. 12; through Feb. 28. (213) 628-2772 or www.centertheatregroup.org. Running time: one hour and 45 minutes with no intermission.

Safe Harbor

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Lower Depth Theater Ensemble
Through December 15

Last year’s arrest of wealthy financier and pal-to-the-powerful Jeffery Epstein on charges related to the sex trafficking of minors sent salacious shock waves throughout the country via the headline-hunting national media. But Epstein and his circle of unprincipled cohorts were not alone. Sexual exploitation and abuse of vulnerable young people is both ongoing and ubiquitous — although its precise scope is difficult to determine as the young victims are too often too brainwashed or intimidated to cooperate in the prosecution of their abusers.

Tira Palmquist’s Safe Harbor spotlights the problem with a dual-pronged narrative about two young teenagers — 12-year-old Sasha (Cymya Johnson) and 14-year-old Mikayla (Yumarie Morales) — who run away from home and are subsequently tricked into trafficking by pimps and procurers. Directed by Anita Dashiell-Sparks for Lower Depth Theater Ensemble, the script is a high-end message vehicle that benefits from quality tech elements and several solid performances. But ultimately the production is constrained by the writing — the lack of depth of the characters and their relationships as Palmquist presents them — as well as the less on-target performances among the ensemble.

The stories run parallel. Mikayla, bounced from one foster home to another, has finally been placed in a group home, but she runs away after one of the male counsellors (Scott Victor Nelson) touches her inappropriately, with intimations of more abuse to follow.

Meanwhile, Sasha lives with her over-strict, recently widowed dad, Michael (Jason Delane Lee), who loves his daughter but whose woeful parenting skills are demonstrated by disciplinary threats of “grounding” that evidence little understanding of the needs of young girls (especially one who’s lost her mother). Michael’s sister Christine (Sydney A. Mason) does what she can to ameliorate the consequences of her brother’s harsh temper, but not enough to prevent Sasha from packing a few things and leaving home.

Both children end up cold and hungry on the street where they’re targeted by bad actors who dress them in provocative clothing and send them out on “dates.” Mikayla gets mixed up with a grubby street guy (Nelson), who promises her love and a rosy future together; Sasha, transformed in a slinky dress and platinum blonde wig (costumes by Wendell C. Carmichael) is lured by a slithery-tongued procuress, Jaz (Mason) and served up to johns at upscale parties.

Both girls end up counseled by June (Yvonne Huff Lee) a victims’ rights advocate who had been sex-trafficked herself as a teen and still suffers nightmares — and daymares — when past traumas break through to disturb the fastidiously constructed equanimity with which she usually copes.

Huff Lee’s natural and non-fussy performance is one of the show’s strengths. Mason is also perversely engaging as the treacherous Jaz, while Johnson’s pouty, credulous mannerisms create a credible pre-teen persona (not always easy for an adult actor playing a child) for her Sasha. Morales likewise avoids stereotype; on the other hand, her Mikayla is almost too understated. The character needs greater spark and more of an individual stamp.

As Michael, Sasha’s dad, Delane Lee brings vocal power and presence to the role, but his actor-ly machinations are overly visible. Part of the problem is the shorthand nature of the dialogue, which is focused on delineating the social ill it seeks to expose but fails to provide much depth or backstory (we don’t learn anything about Michael’s late wife, for example). Also, the script calls for several performers to double up on roles, but I’m not sure that works to the production’s advantage. Nelson plays several roles that might have been better undertaken by multiple actors.

Scenic designer Travis Moelter’s figurative backdrop is a modest but handsome construct of low mountain peaks against the image of a full moon that hint at our own Southern California landscape. Lighting designers Jesse Fryery and Nicole Eng of Visual Terrain periodically flood the playing area with reddish and twilight hues that add great ambience, although sometimes the actors’ faces are too much in shadow. Nichole Baffone’s sound is most notable for its accompaniment of the inner turmoil that afflicts the girls and women who have undergone the terrible ordeals the drama addresses, and that now have them seeking safe harbor.

Zephyr Theater, 7456 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through Dec. 15. www.lower-depth.com. Running time: approximate 90 minutes with no intermission.

Jitney

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Mark Taper Forum
Extended through December 29

RECOMMENDED:

As with all of August Wilson’s work, Jitney provides an intimate look at a close-knit community of African-Americans as they go about their lives. Written in 1982, it was the first play conceived for the Pittsburgh Cycle, his epic 10-play chronicle set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the neighborhood the playwright as a boy called home. Set in the 1970s, Jitneywas revised at least twice (doubtless with many more iterations) before it was finally produced on Broadway in 2017 with Ruben Santiago-Hudson directing. The touring production currently at the Mark Taper Forum features several actors from that Broadway cast, plus the entire production and design package, including David Gallo’s scenic design, Bill Sims Jr.’s original score, and director Santiago-Hudson at the helm. While there is much to love, not all the performances are equally good, and some of the strained plot points are not so easy to overlook.

Jitney takes place in the rundown office of a gypsy cab company owned and managed by Becker (Steven Anthony Jones) — a good, honest man who sometimes intervenes when the drivers working under his aegis fall out over one thing or another. They’re an assorted group of mostly old-timers: busybody Turnbo (Ray Anthony Thomas), who’s always picking a fight with the youngster in the group; 24-year-old Youngblood (Amari Cheatom); the perpetually inebriated Fielding (Anthony Chisholm), forever trying to con a couple of bucks from somebody; and Doub (Keith Randolph Smith), a clear-headed guy who hasn’t time for the troublemaking Turnbo and tells him so. Then there are the non-employees: Shealy (Harvy Blanks), the voluble bookie still searching for the woman who will make him forget his estranged wife of 22 years; and Philmore (Brian D. Coats), an occasional drop-in with marital problems of his own. The sole female character is Youngblood’s frustrated spouse Rena (Nija Okoro), who comes in to hunt down her elusive husband after he filches the grocery money for unexplained “debts,” then finds herself fending off the insinuating advances of the self-deluding Turnbo.

But Jitney‘s weightiest and most pivotal plotline has to do with Becker and his son Booster (Francois Battiste), newly released from prison after 20 years behind bars for shooting a white woman who had falsely accused him of rape. Booster, a college student when he committed the crime, comes looking for reconciliation with his dad, who never attended the trial and never once visited him in prison. That’s because Becker blames Booster for the death of his mother, who survived her son’s guilty verdict by only three weeks. He’s also still smarting from the shaming of his good name (as he sees it) brought on by the rash act of a son in whom he’d vested so much hope. And, humiliation and grief aside, there’s the fact of the murder itself, which Becker cannot sanction.

All this comes pouring out in a scene easily the evening’s dramatic highlight but also its weakest link. Heretofore mildly mannered, a furious Becker now confronts his son with riveting intensity. Booster defends himself — but without remorse. He accuses his dad of not being there for his mother when she desperately needed his support. He also rationalizes the killing as a matter of honor: Rather than be punished for rape, a crime he did not commit, he prefers to pay for a crime that he did — and take revenge for the lie at the same time. He also argues unconvincingly that in this act he was not only preserving his own honor but that of his family name.

And herein lies the rub, for me: It’s hard to condone the premeditated taking of a life (unless, perhaps, the stakes are saving the lives of others), especially if there’s no sense of repentance. Yet the relationship between these two characters, their dialectic, the sense of pathos Wilson sought to create, and the connection of both these elements to the play’s final climactic moment where the torch is supposedly passed, is the spine of the story. Jones’s gripping performance notwithstanding, the faceoff comes off more as an idea vehicle that a lesser playwright might construct, and less the seamless storytelling that Wilson is famous for. Nor does it help that Battiste’s take on Booster lacks vitality; the character is too tentative to be compelling.

As Youngblood, Cheatom does fine as a young guy whose buttons are continually pushed by the meddlesome Turnbo, but it’s a shorthand depiction of this character who is looking to change his life. I also didn’t get a sense of intimacy between Youngblood and Rena.

All that said, there are many more reasons to love this production than not, and they’re found in the kaleidoscopic performances of Thomas, Fielding, Smith, Coats and Blanks, as well as Jones — all seasoned actors who understand and can embody the tragicomic rhythms and truths of Wilson’s work. Jones and Thomas are standouts.

David Gallo’s set is notable not only for the dingy interior that is the focal point for these characters’ lives, but for how this interior is framed, within a cityscape of row houses of faded brick and beat up old cars, and with the steeple of a church rising just across the way.

Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown L.A.–Civic Center; Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2:30 p.m.; Sun., 1 p.m. & 6 p.m.; extended through Dec. 29. (213) 628-2772 or www.centertheatregroup.org. Running time: two hours and 30 minutes with an intermission.

Key Largo

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Geffen Playhouse
Extended through December 15

In Key Largo, a 1948 film classic, Humphrey Bogart played a disillusioned anti-hero, an ex-army officer in World War II who, despite his cynicism, musters up enough moral conviction to stand up to Edward G. Robinson’s sneering gangster, Johnny Rocco. Based on a play by Maxwell Anderson (different from the movie in that the bad guys were Mexican bandidos, the war was the Spanish Civil War, and the hero dies at the end), the film communicated an unshakably righteous distinction between right and wrong, good guys and bad ones.

Directed by Doug Hughes at Geffen Playhouse, this new stage adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher and Andy Garcia hasn’t strayed too far from the film; indeed, not only do the characters and their dialogue sound familiar, but, like the film, they operate within an anachronistic black-and-white world view in which, reassuringly, good triumphs over evil in the end. At a time when gangsterism has usurped the highest echelons in our land, viewing a Johnny Rocco as the ultimate villain is, for me, an uphill sell. So while the production arrives with a knockout set (John Lee Beatty), plenty of ambience and an entertaining portrayal by Garcia as Rocco, it’s easy enough to be distracted and annoyed by flawed performances in a couple of other significant roles. I chalk that up to lax directorial oversight.

Danny Pino plays ex-army major Frank McCloud, who’s arrived at a shuttered hotel in Key Largo to deliver his regards and condolences to the family of one of the men who had died under his command. The hotel is owned by the deceased man’s Dad, the blind Mr. D’Alcala (Tony Plana), who’s now assisted in the running of his establishment by pretty young Nora (Rose McIver), his son’s hastily wed widow. Right now, the only guests are drug-runner Rocco, his two henchmen Curly (Louis Mustillo) and Toots (Stephen Borrello), and Rocco’s moll Gaye (Joely Fisher), a once glamorous head-turner gone to seed by way of alcohol. The first scene is an encounter between McCloud and Rocco’s crew, in which the former establishes his bona fides as a man’s man who demonstrates courtesy to women where the other men show contempt.

With a hurricane on the horizon, the criminals await word from a buyer of their heroin, a former associate of Johnny’s who took over some of his territory after the recently-released mobster went to prison. Hovering on the outskirts of the plot is the local sheriff (Richard Riehle), on the hunt for a couple of escaped prisoners — two Native Americans who had been incarcerated for minor offenses.

The crux of the drama is the psychological mano-a-mano between a reluctant man of principle and an unscrupulous blackguard practically salivating in anticipation of assaulting the pure and honest Nora. Theatrically speaking, however, there’s no contest between Pino’s sullen McCloud and Garcia’s flamboyant Rocco — a role the latter performer slips into easily and obviously relishes big time. By contrast, a theater audience gets very little from Pino who, under Hughes’s misdirection, appears to have mistakenly cultivated his character for the camera rather than for the Geffen’s medium-sized proscenium.

The other disappointing depiction is of the feisty D’Alcala. With McCloud functioning as the cynical anti-hero, it falls to this character to articulate all the hokey sentiments and righteous anger typical of post–World War II American pop culture, preserved in this contemporary adaptation. It’s a pitfall Plana hasn’t managed to escape in a disappointingly declamatory performance. He also seemed rather too vigorous and healthy for his character, a disabled man in a shuttered hotel deeply grieving his lost son.

As the vulnerable Nora, McIver is attractive and appealing, but she doesn’t do much to stamp the role as her own. Mustillo as Rocco’s yes-man, Riehle as the sheriff, and Bradley Smedeker in a cameo as the cocky hood with whom Rocco does business all manage to rise above stereotype. Fisher (on stage too rarely, for my money) delivers a soulful performance as Rocco’s castoff, much-abused inamorata.

The set is a visual feast, but I could not help thinking it should have been shabbier and more weathered, given the financial strata of its proprietor. As sound designer, Alex Hawthorn does a great job conjuring the storm, and the production design (production designers Kaitlin Pietras and Jason H. Thompson, with lighting by Peter Kaczorowski and score by Arturo Sandoval) is impressive.

Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood; Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 3 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. & 7 p.m.; extended through Dec. 15. geffenplayhouse.org. Running time: approximately one hour and 35 minutes with an intermission.