Theater Reviews

Including this week's pick, Tale of 2Cities: An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Wednesday, Sep 27 2006

Telling Tale: Playwright Heather Woodbury Photo by Nick Amato

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CRACK WHORE, BULIMIC, GIRL-NEXT-DOOR Three actresses play various facets of a single character in Marnie Olson’s one-act about body image. The play ponders the chicken-or-the-egg question: Which came first? The depression or the eating disorder? Mary Pascoe plays the Girl-Next-Door, the pretty, popular one who always gets noticed. As the Crack Whore, Kirsten Severson also gets noticed but for the wrong reasons. Playwright Olson plays the Fat Girl who binges and purges, trying all the while to fill the massive void inside her. All three women have internalized the message that it’s best to “be small, be invisible.” Caroline Marshall’s seamless direction allows the blending of the three women into a single voice — one performer starts a line of dialogue but another finishes it. The male characters are all played by Anthony Cran, who shines in a variety of thankless roles. Red-Headed Angels in association with Roadkill Productions at PSYCHIC VISIONS THEATRE, 3447 Motor Ave., W.L.A.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; thru Oct. 14. (310) 535-6007. (Sandra Ross)

PLAYING WITH MY MOTHER Marc Ketchum’s confused and confusing comedy centers on college boy Marty (Graham Norris), who’s plagued by a bullying, manipulative mother, Hope (Kristin Pfeifer). She constantly addresses him as “Little Motherfucker,” belittles his girlfriends and his absent father, and carries on an affair with an offstage lover. Marty’s also hounded by his faculty adviser, Ridley (Skip Pipo), about the autobiographical play he is writing for his Fast Track Humanities course. Megalomaniac Ridley, obsessed with sex, degradation and Emily Dickinson, insists on making the play ever darker, incorporating the notion that Marty is incestuously involved with Hope, and that she pimps him out around the neighborhood. Hope’s ghost (after she has conveniently died) tries to wrest control of Marty’s play for herself: While Ridley attempts to portray her as a monster, she insists in seeing herself as a model mother. These various versions of “the truth” are acted out psycho-drama style, and the action becomes increasingly far-fetched. The actors are game and navigate their way through the tale’s dizzying contradictions with considerable skill, and Ketchum’s script provides some funny scenes, but we’re not left with much when it’s over. Flight Theater at THE COMPLEX, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.; Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 7:30 & 10 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; thru Oct. 1. (323) 662-7986. (Neal Weaver)

READY, AIM, YOU’RE FIRED! When Our Beloved CEO (Norman Ingar) strides in to the workplace of Jeremy Kehoe’s comedy and says, with swaggering glee, “I’m here to impose some irrational fear into our anonymous employees,” you get a hopeful glimpse of what kind of social satire the play might have been. Unfortunately, it’s a flat-footed sitcom that focuses on Barbara Brooks’ (Stacey Miller) de-evolution from ding-dong to hatchet woman, rewarded with an “employee of the month” certificate and other stupid gifts for her ability to fire employees at the will of the boss, Mr. Mann (Robert Gallo). The reason behind all the firings appears to be unfettered sadism, and the play lampoons the conviction that cruelty is a noble corporate quality, and that drones will sell their souls for compliments and gifts from on high. We’re never told what services or products this company offers, and this lack of specificity renders the play’s truths as more reductive than penetrating, while Richard Alan Woody’s remedial direction has most of the actors staggering through some dreary one-liners. At least Miller’s comedic, bewildered attitude has its charms, but when she fires off the cap gun she uses to dispatch the unfortunate, half the time it misfires — talk about a metaphor. NOHO ACTORS’ STUDIO, 5215 Lankershim Blvd., N. Hlywd.; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; thru Oct. 8. (818) 761-5520. (Steven Leigh Morris)

SEX, DRUGS AND MINIVANS The typical Lisa Ann Orkin tale is a monologue you’d overhear at brunch — a stream of consciousness gush that makes room for offensive jokes but none to take a breath. Her topics are de rigeur for a divorcée: ex trauma, meddling mothers and changing bodies with unfamiliar terrains of back hair. What sets her apart is her charismatic delivery and willingness to plumb her most embarrassing depths (mainly stalking and an awful lot of pot smoking), which makes her feel like the insta–best friend you just hugged in the ladies room. Her latest show punctuates itself with cheery anthem rock that underscores her climb out of postdivorce depression, sung karaoke style by her, Nora Linden Titner and Carol Ann Thomas — pals from temple — while Michael James bangs the drums and Geri Fanilli pounds the keys. Orkin’s sagas tend to overstay their welcome — particularly when she runs through every disastrous speed-dating matchup — yet by the sheer force of her personality, she herself never does. Threaded into the breezy evening are a surprising number of sensitive and revelatory moments springing from the failing health of her 92-year-old aunt and the rock bottom she hits that involves an airplane, three Xanax and a hot-sauce salesman. Orkin may claim to avoid men with depth, but her still bong waters run deep. FAKE GALLERY, 4319 Melrose Ave., Hlywd.; Sat., 7 p.m.; thru Oct. 21 (no perf Sept. 30). (323) 661-0786. (Amy Nicholson)