Theater Reviews: Gulls, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Howlin' Blues and Dirty Dogs

HAMLET has long been considered the most daunting and complicated of Shakespearean riddles to confront actors and directors alike. Is the student prince’s famed inability to carry out his revenge a case of overintellectualized paralysis? Or, as the 20th century’s vogue of Freudian interpretations would have it, is he simply Oedipally conflicted into inaction? According to director D.D. Thomas’ clumsy, clinical concept staging, Hamlet is simply stark, raving mad. Taking madness as his cue, set designer James Coyne gives us the day room of a seedy mental institution right out of Ken Kesey. Christian Levatino’s bluntly realized Hamlet is a volatile, McMurphy-esque mental patient, alternating between near-catatonic melancholy and manic eruptions of physical violence. Call this the bipolar Hamlet. Following through with the allegory, Gertrude (Rebecca Jordan) is a cool, controlling, meds-distributing Nurse Ratched in cahoots with Claudius (Rob Kahn), the institution’s blandly Caligarian chief psychiatrist. Ophelia (an indifferent Sierra Fisk) makes her entrance as an institutionalized wrist slasher, long before her breakdown and drowning. The biggest surprise — and Thomas’ moment of inspiration — may well be the image of King Hamlet’s ghost, a horrific, multiple apparition of fully masked and gowned surgeons presumably ready to knock out some lobotomies. When Hamlet finally kicks into revenge mode in Act 2, Levatino signifies the transition by removing his McMurphy cap to reveal a Travis Bickle Mohawk. Such movie-trivia foreshadowing only makes Thomas’ bucket-of-blood dénouement all the more anticlimactic. Little Victory Theater, 3324 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.; thru Aug. 17. (818) 841-5422. A Gangbusters Theatre Company production. (Bill Raden)

Mrs. Warren’s Profession

Suddenly Last Summer

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More About

• Steven Leigh Morris
• James Hurd
• Tennessee Williams
• Theatrical Plays
• Theater

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Suddenly Last Summer

THE HEIST SHOW: A THRANCE CAPER This slight dance comedy set in a stark, noir cityscape opens with an attempted Grand Theft Auto that evolves into a Keystone Cops kick line as the law chases down and arrests petty criminal Cosimo (Lucius Bryant). In the pen, he hears about a can’t-fail robbery eventually enacted by girlfriend Rosalind (stern bombshell C.J. Merriman) and a gang of broke hustlers — clownish Toto (Alesha Nicole Palmer), slick Basil (Raymond McFarland), bumbling dad Bill (Joseph Beck), malapropism-prone Leon (Juanita Chase) and female boxer Sam (Kelly Grete Ehlert). Aside from an athletic seduction number between McFarland and barefoot ingenue J.M. Beatty, the production never regains the opening number’s clumsy charm. Josephine Schekert’s script is both overcrowded and simplistic, and as the ensemble alternates between yelling, mumbling and overlapping of lines, one wishes the play had scrapped words altogether for an evening of movement. As it is, there’s so little dance that there’s leisure to question whether director-choreographer Jessica Schroeder’s piece is actual thrance, which is defined as theater that expresses character through outsized motion. Synchronized soft-shoe routines for eight are unenlightening (at least they’re not as muddled as one subplot, in which lesbian Sam falls for their mark, Noel Carlon’s male nurse). Throaty standards like “Why Don’t You Do Right?” and “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” are smart selections. Studio/Stage, 520 N. Western Ave., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; thru Aug. 10. (323) 860-6503. An Outlaw Style Thrance Company production. (Amy Nicholson)

GO HOWLIN’ BLUES AND DIRTY DOGS The spirit of the blues pulsates resoundingly throughout this stirring musical based on the life of Big Mama Thornton. Class-act vocalist Barbara Morrison, who sports her own international credentials, delivers an affecting performance as the feisty, soulful singer who died prematurely of heart and liver disease in 1984 at age 57. Written by the Theatre Perception Consortium (Larry James Robinson, Carla DuPree Clark and Tu’Nook), and aided by the gorgeous work of composer Kevin Alan O’Neal, the script, constructed as a memory piece, skips around with some randomness as it tells of Thornton’s journey from her beginnings as the daughter of a fire-and-brimstone Alabama preacher (Robinson) to acclaimed heights and, later, relative obscurity. The strengths in Morrison’s performance lie not in her effort to recreate the historical woman (which she never really attempts to do) but in her expressionistic portrayal of this talented but troubled figure’s essence, captured in Morrison’s earthy, heartrending vocals. Clark directs a top-notch supporting ensemble that includes, besides Robinson, Lou Beatty as vaudevillian Sammy Green, who first plucked Thornton from a local talent show; Larney ‘Dapper’ Johnson as singer Johnny Otis; and Phillip Bell as Johnny Ace, who shot himself as Thornton watched haplessly. The music, performed by a live four-piece band under O’Neal’s musical direction, is simply topflight. Secret Rose Theatre, 11246 Magnolia Blvd., N. Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; thru Aug. 10. (213) 480-3232. (Deborah Klugman)

LOST ON LANKERSHIM This slate of one-acts, written by John Falchi, offers its share of entertaining moments. First up is “Cowboy Goodbyes,” which is more like a “minivignette.” Directed by Zombie Joe, it’s a quick thank-you addressed to some hospitable ranchers by Jim Eshom, outfitted in cowpoke attire, complete with six-shooter. The costume is the only thing that’s of note. In “Hungry for You,” Falchi directs with a slick comic touch. Matthew Sklar, Charles Dequepin and Greg Kaczynski are French Foreign Legionnaires stranded on a boat and driven to the brink of cannibalism. A surprise ending artfully twists the comic knife. Denise Devin directs “A Year,” a tale of redemptive love that’s a tad overwrought. Danielle Larson and Sarah Lesley are sisters whose familial bond is tested by a terrible accident that’s left one blind and the other an emotional and psychological cripple. Better acting is needed to pull this one off. Falchi directs the dangerously funny “Closing,” the riotous gem of the evening. Tommy Mastak (William Norrett) is the epitome of the smooth-talking pitchman who can talk his way into a deal or contract for just about anything, including sex. Zombie Joe directs the darkly funny “Boy’s Night Out,” in which Brian Ibsen, Jim Eshom, and T. Arthur Cottam play guys enjoying a night of wild drinking, but they sadly find their friendship fatally compromised by a woman. “Stories” is a very cleverly written tale sharply directed by Eshom, which finds three characters (Elizabeth Sage, Jessica Amal Rice and Alejandra Bursik-Cervantes) consigned to a “literary limbo,” and searching not for an author, but for a way out. ZJU Theatre Group, 4850 Lankershim Blvd., N. Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat, 8 p.m.; thru. Aug. 23. (818) 202-4120 (Lovell Estell III)