Theater Reviews: Closer, Accidental Death of an Anarchist

GO  ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST Dario Fo’s farce concerns a maniac/master of disguises (Taras Los) who impersonates a magistrate in a Milan police station in order to help oily cops (Adam Edgar, Chris Covics and Stephen Simon) redramatize the events around the “accidental” fatal plunge of an anarchist-detainee from their window — in order to get their story straight. Near the end of Diana Wyenn’s staging, one of the actors breaks into a screed about the hypocrisy of U.S. policy in Iraq, layered onto a history of hypocrisy that goes back to the Carter administration, plus how the funding of the war — for the benefit of a few favored contractors — has plunged us into such debt that we’re now flirting with an economic depression. The other actors look on askance, pleading to return to Fo’s play, which was written before the Carter administration. Yet this moment defies all laws of probability, which point to the audience checking out during a lecture. Mysteriously and comically, the screed beautifully defines the play’s meaning, breaking the action in a play where such breakage is routine. Rarely has screed-as-art been so effective. On its own terms, the farce takes a while to heat up, despite the ensemble’s best efforts. Those efforts do pay off in Act 2, when the mystery of what happened becomes unveiled and the presumption of who was to blame gets inverted. The ensemble, which also includes Richard Hilton and Alla Poberesky, gives heroically insane performances, with nicely contrapuntal comic timing and physical humor. Covics’ set, with tilting stacks of books and file boxes rising through the ceiling, establishes the madcap whimsy that’s sustained throughout. Unknown Theater, 1110 N. Seward Ave., Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 6 p.m.; thru March 29. (310) 702-5280. (Steven Leigh Morris)

Sara Shapley

(Click to enlarge)

Ghosts from the future invade The Violet Hour

(Click to enlarge)

Mr. Marmalade

(Click to enlarge)

Secrets of the Trade (Glover and Brochtrup)

 GO  ALL THE HELP YOU NEED “Who the fuck are you?,” shouts a gun-toting assailant as the lights come up. While we are not sure who the gunman is, we quickly discover that he is a character played by Tim Ryan Meinelschmidt, in his one-man show that chronicles life as a Hollywood handyman. Meinelschmidt describes getting into show business, his first performance on Broadway and moving to Los Angeles, where he started handyman work during an actors’ strike. He recounts jobs done for everyone from Ann the Filipina stripper, to Werner, a foulmouthed German perfectionist, to a fat lady with 57 cats. To add atmosphere to these anecdotes, director Christopher Fessenden has Meinelschmidt build and unbuild the set, which looks like a carpenter’s workshop. Though Meinelschmidt’s impressions of the characters are uneven, there are some solid comic moments, especially in his descriptions of one-upmanship with his friend and co-worker, Mark. Toward the end, the piece turns darker, describing a terrible incident that Meinelschmidt witnessed in Tarzana. Only then do we learn the story behind the gunman from the opening, a chilling climax based on a real-life violent crime. Met Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hlywd.; Sun., 7 p.m.; thru April 13. (323) 960-7740. A Theatre East Production. (Mayank Keshaviah)

 CLOSER A sharp, savvy, often visceral work, Patrick Marber’s unblinking probe into the modern-day battle of the sexes emerges bloodless and unaffecting under Vincent Duque’s direction. Structured in short, biting segments, Marber’s caustic tale revolves around Dan (Mark Kay), a sardonic writer of obituaries; Alice (Jacqueline Jandrell), a saucy gamine and former stripper whom he rescues from a near-death hit-and-run; Anna (Kirsty Hinchcliffe), a mature and gracious professional photographer with whom Dan becomes enthralled; and Larry (Stefan Hajek), Alice’s loving and eventually bitterly betrayed husband. The quartet engage in a round of sexual trysts and emotional pyrotechnics initiated by the faithless, manipulative Dan, in which everyone ultimately loses. The production’s glaring problem has to do with a lack of chemistry. Obviously, a play detailing raw sex and the search for love calls for plenty of it; here, the sparks fail to fly. This is especially true of Kay’s Dan, in relation to both women. He’s genial and understated, where he needs to be edgy and provocative for the play to make sense. Jandrell, in various states of undress throughout, postures or vents rather than probing Alice’s vulnerability. Hajek is capable as a wounded male irretrievably bent on revenge, and Hinchcliffe is sympathetic as his guilt-ridden wife. El Centro Theatre, 804 N. El Centro Ave., Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; thru March 29. (323) 960-7724. An Alpha Company Production (Deborah Klugman)

 ICELAND Writer-director Roger Guenveur Smith staged his performance piece with Treva Offutt last weekend at REDCAT. How one 80-minute work with two actor-dancers, Marc Anthony Thompson’s delicate soundtrack and a few slides can be commissioned by three institutions in three cities (the Public Theatre in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art) opens a small window onto the arts-funding industry. The show has also been presented in L.A. (Grand Performances and the Mark Taper Forum) and New York (PS 122 and the Brooklyn Academy of Music), and at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as the Calabash Festival in Jamaica. You could say that Smith is like Tim Miller, but for straight people. He and Offutt, barefoot and dressed in white, each held a wireless microphone to tell the story of a love affair, and it’s passing strange. Why did Smith, or the character he’s portraying, walk away from Brooklyn and from such a beautiful and devoted woman — evidently a pattern of his or of his character’s — to pursue his art in, yes, Iceland? The piece questions through spoken-word poetry, the essence of a frigid clime, and his frigid heart. All she ever wanted was fidelity, she said. He only promised that he would try. In the performance, he offers a series of rationalizations that float on thin ice, including the volcanoes of the far North — containing the cauldrons of human misery — and his need to jump in. The slide that opens the show, and reappears, is an X-ray of his slightly bent spine, which he uses as a cause of his inability to be “upright.” This beautifully written, gorgeously spoken and haunting ballet studies the consequences of art trumping love, or the love of art trumping the love of life. It is both an exercise in narcissism and a mockery of it, very much in the tradition of Spalding Gray. Because, at this point in its evolution, its societal and global references are mere rationalizations from a man running from one woman to the next, and from one passion to another; Iceland’s internal commitment to a purpose larger than itself is as fleeting as its main character. REDCAT at Disney Hall, dwntwn. Closed. (Steven Leigh Morris)