New Theater Reviews: Cartoon, Li'l Abner, and The Brig

Enci

Prisoners in The Brig

Some Girl(s)

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More About

• Scott Stein
• Scott Erikson
• Neil LaBute
• Theatrical Plays
• Theater

GO  STAY FOREVER: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF DUSTY SPRINGFIELD Kristin Holly Smith plays the pop diva in this musical biography, featuring 13 of Springfield's signature songs, including "Son of a Preacher Man" and "Wishing and Hoping." It's essentially a solo show, though Smith receives able support from a four-piece band, led by music director Zachary Provost, and backup singers Lelah Foster and Annette Moore. Between songs, Smith narrates and re-enacts Springfield's past as a wayward Irish lass named Mary O'Brien, till she fell in love with Motown music and changed her name. On the British TV show Ready, Steady, Go!, she helped introduce black music in England, and built a rep as a white soul singer. She scored international success in the 1970s, but her personal life was stormy. A lesbian, she drove her lover away with her growing drug and alcohol dependence and rock-star egotism, and came out (or was outed) in the press. In apartheid-era Johannesburg, she was put under house arrest by the South African government for insisting that blacks and coloreds should be admitted to her concerts. But the real draw here is the songs, sung with passion and verve by Smith, who combines rich musicality with high-octane conviction and style. L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center's Village at Ed Gould Plaza, Renberg Theatre, 1125 N. McCadden Pl., Hlywd.; (323) 860-7300 or www.lagaycenter.org/boxoffice. (Neal Weaver)

WHAT THE BUTLER SAW Risqué and relevant when it first premiered, Joe Orton's 1969 lampoon of the British mental-health system — and of the repressed society in which it flourished — is today more of an antique curio that resembles an episode from The Benny Hill Show. A lecherous psychiatric hack named Dr. Prentice (Carl J. Johnson) persuades a naive young job applicant (Kelsey Wedeen) to remove her clothes. When his wife (Carolyn Hennesy) arrives home unexpectedly, he scurries to conceal the woman's garments, stranding her naked in an examining cubicle. A fatuous medical bureaucrat (Peter Altschuler) arrives; to save face, Prentice passes the bewildered would-be secretary off as a patient, then stands by passively while she's drugged by this zealous and equally lust-filled government bureaucrat. The ribald antics that follow involve full frontal nudity and a trio of confused cross-dressed characters, including a bare-buttocked bobby — a genuinely hilarious moment. The production's main problem — as with so many other American productions of British farce — is its failure, under the direction of Kiff Scholl, to nail down the mindset behind the burlesque. Both Johnson and Altschuler master the mechanics — if not the sensibility — of their roles skillfully. Hennesy's middle-aged sexpot, however, borders on caricature, while Wedeen's naif never gets much beyond the strictures of sketch comedy. Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Dr., Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; thru March 1. 310-281-8337. (Deborah Klugman)