Theater Reviews: Atlanta, Local Story, Schoolhouse Rock

MONNA VANNA  Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck’s bloated 1902 melodrama has not been produced in this country for more than a century, and now we know why. This fusty work tells of one man’s willingness to sacrifice thousands of lives to protect his wife’s virtue and his own “honor.” In 15th-century Italy during a war between Pisa and Florence (Pisa, on the losing end, is besieged, and its people starving), Guido Colonna (Stephan Smith Collins), the ruler and military leader, is desperate when he gets word that Prinzivalle (Bryant Romo), his Florentian counterpart, will spare the city if Guido’s wife, Vanna (Emily Wing), visits his tent. Despite the dire situation, the enraged, jealous husband refuses, turning aside the pleas of his father (Robin Field) to spare his people. Act 2 details the meeting between Prinzivalle and Vanna — who defies her husband and delivers herself — revealing the pair as long-lost childhood sweethearts, and forcing her to a hokey choice between love and duty. Directed by Joel Marquez, the production doesn’t find whatever psychological complexity might be ferreted from the long-winded script — favoring instead head-splitting histrionics and slushy sentimentality. A spare set leaves the performers with little to do while delivering their long speeches. Field is watchable as a seasoned elder, and Wing communicates vulnerability in a wan performance. However, both the bombastic Collins — whose arrogant commander never questions his own virtue — and the bathetic Romo are in over their heads. Lizbeth Lucca and Sarah Moore’s colorful period costumes are thoroughly wasted. STELLA ADLER THEATRE, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., Hlywd.; Thurs.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Dec. 16. (323) 465-4446. (Deborah Klugman)

  SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK The 19 ditties belted out by Chad Borden, Tameka Dawn, Antoine Reynaldo Diel, Eduardo Enrikez, Elaine Loh and Susan Rudick are one-third of the entire output of the beloved ’70s and ’80s kids program and, as such, they cover a lot of educational ground. Listen up and learn about grammar rules, women’s rights, the solar system, time tables and a whole lotta American history. While the lyrics are often so mumbled that the exact definition of a pronoun is indecipherable, the tots in the surprisingly hipster-free matinee audience were downright giddy about multiplying by fives and pretending to be Russians and Italian immigrants as they jumped into a melting pot superimposed with a long wooden spoon. But the standout is the cherubic Rudick, whose crystalline voice makes a haunting lullaby of “Figure 8” and gives “Interplanet Janet” extra bop (though Pluto is now thrown dismissively into the wings). Stringing along the favorites like “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Only a Bill” (along with a grating framing device about a teacher who needs inspiration, darn it), director Mark Savage and choreographer Brian Paul Mendoza keep the mood peppy without parody, though as the character Bill (as in Senate bill) shuffled offstage, someone couldn’t resist shouting, “Can we get out of Iraq now?” GREENWAY COURT THEATER, 544 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.; Sat., 4 p.m.; Sun., 4 & 7 p.m.; thru Feb. 24. (323) 655-7679. (Amy Nicholson)

SPLIT SECOND  The action in Dennis McIntyre’s gritty 1984 drama unfurls on a seamy New York street where a black cop, Val (William Christopher Stephens), makes what seems to be a routine bust of white car thief William Ellis (Taber Schroeder). Offhand banter between the pair turns ugly when Ellis taunts his black captor with an onslaught of racial insults, after which Val snaps and dispatches the garrulous perpetrator with a bullet to the heart. What follows is straight out of dirty-cop protocol. Val works the scene to make the murder appear legitimate, lies repeatedly to a skeptical inspector (a fine performance by Gary Robinson), and finds himself doing the same to his cop buddy, his wife, Lea (Janora McDuffie), and his straight-laced father (Ernest Harden Jr.), a former policeman. The final scene offers no surprises and little perspective. In his overwritten script, McIntyre fails to make this killer cop’s feelings of guilt, moral ambiguity and ultimate self-betrayal viscerally convincing, opting instead for a melodrama, contrivance and racial animus to explain and justify the indefensible. No fault can be found with JWJ’s direction, or the fine performances. THE NEXT STAGE, 1523 N. La Brea Ave., Second Floor, Hlywd.; Thurs., 8 p.m.; thru. Dec.13. (323) 850-7827 (Lovell Estell III)

  THE WINTER’S TALE Shakespeare’s dream play starts in Sicily, where King Leontes (Geoff Elliott) grows suddenly and weirdly jealous of his house guest, Polixenes, King of Bohemia (Stephen Rockwell), for the way the hostess queen, Hermione (Jill Hill), cajoles Polixenes to stay a bit longer. Something about the way their noses almost brush up against each other sets the Sicilian king into a rage — like Othello but without Iago goading him. Rather, Leontes manufactures this insanity all by himself, and for no apparent reason. Out of his gourd, he formally, publicly charges his pregnant wife with infidelity, and anybody else of treason who might stand up for her, such as his loyal servant, Camillo (William Dennis Hunt). At her trial, an oracle defends the queen’s honor, but this is not evidence Leontes can hear, or bear. Being of Greek origin, the tale entails some fleeing, and the abused queen’s death, but not before the premature birth of her daughter, whom the lunatic king banishes as a bastard. The other pole of this bipolar play is Bohemia, 16 years later, where the mid-section unfolds, revealing King Polixenes’ predatory issues with his son (Ross Kidder), who’s now wooing the Sicilian King’s banished daughter (Alison Elliott), though only we know her ancestry. A scene much like the raising of Lazarus from the dead provides the hypnotic peak to the drama’s slow crescendo of events. A lush visual beauty envelopes co-directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez Elliott’s elegant production. Some of this is contained in the opulent beauty of Peer Gottlieb’s lighting design, and the way it falls on Soojin Lee’s Edwardian costumes. There’s also Darcy Scanlin’s deceptively spare set, framed by metal spikes at the stage’s perimeter that reach at varied angles into the sky. That the language is so beautifully spoken goes without saying in this company, but here it’s supplemented by a wandering violinist (Endre Balogh), whose sparingly selected accompaniments give this production its meditative grace. A NOISE WITHIN, 134 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale; in rep, call for schedule; thru Dec. 8. (818) 240-0901, ext. 1. (Steven Leigh Morris)