Vengeance Can Wait

Underground Theatre
Through June 29

Photo by Yukari Black

One doesn’t need a degree in Japanese studies to recognize the absurdities at work in Tokyo playwright Yukiko Motoya’s 2000 comic probing of one of the darker cultural polarities of Japan’s national psyche. A passing acquaintance with the films of Ozu, Kurosawa or Oshima, or some of the more transgressive strains of contemporary manga will do.

On the one hand, there is the uniquely Japanese horror at giving offense; on the other, a near-sadistic capacity for bullying. Together they help to explain both the estimably high level of civility as well as some of the more extreme unpleasantness of the Shōwa period. In Motoya’s dysfunctional romance, they produce a comic powder keg.

When he isn’t working his day job as a state executioner (like the U.S., Japan remains a proud member of that dubious club of nations), dour and taciturn Hidenori Yamana (a hilariously spot-on Joseph Lee) returns to the cramped apartment he shares with his exasperatingly hairsplitting and servile roommate Nanase Ogawa (the fine Shiori Ideta).

Though they sleep in the same room, albeit in separate bunks, and Nanase calls him “daddy,” the two are related only in the sense of both surviving the same car accident when they were children that claimed their respective families. Since then, they have been bound together by Hidenori’s vow to enact a terrible revenge on Nanase over the accident — and her eagerness to accept the retribution in order to please him — regardless of the fact that neither can even recall the alleged offense.

Subplots involving Nanase’s attempts to learn joke-telling and the cockeyed romantic complications introduced by Hidenori’s sexual-provocateur coworker (Takumi Bansho) and Nanase’s brassy and intolerant comedy partner (Yukiyo Komura) help ramp up the uneasy laughs — whose quotient should improve as director Yukari Black’s tentative staging finds its timing in performance.—Bill Raden

Underground Theater, 1312-1314 N. Wilton Place, Hlywd.; through June 29. https://www.Hollywoodfringe.org/projects/1725

Seven Seductions of Taylor Swift

Cupcake Theatre
Through June 29

Courtesy Thaddeus Shafer

Though the elderly are loathe to admit it, certain cultural phenomena exist as undeniable and indelible generational markers — conceptual divides as impossible to cross as they are to fathom by the aged. Above-the-neck fashion tattoos are one. Below-the-crotch low riding pants are another.

And then there are millennial pop sensations the likes of saccharine-sweet crossover country artist Taylor Swift.

Speaking for myself — a pre-Millennial former grunge-rocker — prior to seeing Thaddeus Shafer’s warm-hearted, one-man send-up of Swift’s tabloid-plastered, celebrity-saturated love life, neither the tween idol nor her vast output of insidiously bouncy and hook-happy bubblegum mega-hits were familiar beyond having once listened to Walk Off the Earth’s witty a cappella cover of “I Knew You Were Trouble” on YouTube. (I don’t get out much, okay?)

But solid satire has never demanded a priori experience for laughs, and writers Caitlin Bower, Nadia Vazquez, Joanna Horowitz, Joanna Bateman, Kit Steinkellner and Kari Lee manage to make their points in director Amin El Gamal’s sturdy staging without unduly stretching any frontiers of sketch comedy.

For anyone who’s seen Shafer soar in sterling studio revivals of Caryl Churchill and Paula Vogel mounted by L.A.’s Illyrian Players, however, the actor’s antic impersonations of the seven Swiftian ex-heartthrobs — Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, John Mayer, Corey Monteith, Jake Gyllenhaal, Connor Kennedy and Harry Styles — simply pale beside his more deeply rooted engagement with language and character offered by Illyrian’s platinum roster of high-performance playwrights.

Which is to say that when one is accustomed to seeing Shafer riding racehorses, it can be disconcerting to suddenly see him saddled on a milk-wagon plug, even for laughs. Not that the concept of a tongue-in-cheek Swift portrait constructed solely out of portrayals of the callow, TMZ-grade boyfriends doesn’t have merit, just that in order to run, a thoroughbred of Shafer’s caliber requires material not so literal-minded in the turns, and with far less interstitial furniture rearranging on the track.—Bill raden

Cupcake Theater, 6520 Hollywood Blvd., Hlywd.; through June 29. https://www.Hollywoodfringe.org/projects/1878

These reviews are offered via a partnership between L.A. Weekly and Stage Raw. To maximize coverage of the Hollywood Fringe Festival, the two publications are sharing reviews and funding responsibilities. Stage Raw is an Emerge Project of the Pasadena Arts Council, with other funding coming from a combination of advertising and individual donors.  For the L.A. Weekly, please visit www.laweekly.com