GO CHARLES DICKENS’ OLIVER TWIST The austere beauty of Julia Rodriguez-Elliott’s staging (of Neil Barlett’s excellent adaptation) comes from a haunting blend of musicality — the 14-member ensemble sings the opening and closing recitations in a rousing, pitch-perfect a cappella, and much of the theatrical tension comes from the rhythmic clanging of sticks in unison, while Endre Balogh’s violin accompaniment tilts the tone away from Dickens’ sentimental world of orphans and villains, good and evil, and rich and poor and into a pool filled with more contradictions and ambiguities. Soojin Lee’s costumes capture not only the era but also the grime and dereliction of Victorian London. Dickens’ novel is a saga of human trafficking, and Brian Dare portrays the smudge-faced 10-year-old victim, orphan Oliver Twist, with a subtly pained glint in his eye, which reflects his punishing fate. Tom Fitzpatrick brings a marvelous gruffness to Fagin, the leader of the pickpockets, who adopts Oliver for a while; Geoff Elliott has a delicate turn in drag as proprietress Mrs. Sowerberry; while Robertson Dean also stands out for his clearly enunciated and richly tempered array of characters. Jill Hill is becoming mistress of the femme fatale for this troupe; her “no-good-deed-goes-unpunished” Nancy comes packed with understandable paranoia and glimpses of kindness. The director opened the show by pleading for contributions, as the theater has a campaign for a new theater in Pasadena. “I know it’s a bad time,” she told the audience, “but we didn’t pick the time, the time picked us.” She did, however, pick this play, and the time is perfect for it. A Noise Within, 234 N. Grand Ave., Glendale; in rep, through Dec. 14; call for schedule. (818) 240-0910, Ext. 1. (Steven Leigh Morris)
GO CUTE WITH CHRIS: LIVE Aside from his TV career, Canadian actor Chris Leavins made his name by creating one of the most popular series on the Internet – 100,000 hits per show by using a $300 videocam and uploading broadcasts of himself, in his apartment (somewhere between Silver Lake and Echo Park, to judge from the images he beams onto a screen in his one-man show), and displaying photographs of people’s cute pets. His one-hour live performance is a kind comic exegesis on the essence of “cute” — and his larger purpose – residing somewhere between that of David Lettterman and Ira Glass, is trying to find the stories that bind us. In cream suit and sneakers, Leavins’ humor derives partly from his slightly forlorn expression, which he beams out like a laser whenever the audience responds with “ooohs” and “aahs” to the broadcast picture of a baby kangaroo in a pouch, or a kitten with a bow. No sentimentalist, Leavins deadpans that “cute” lasts about six weeks; then you’re in for 12 years of cat poop and matted fur. His broader cultural insight is on the fleeting value we place on superficial attraction – pet photos that have little purpose to anyone but ourselves — and which are relegated like wornout mementos, the detritus of our lives, perhaps like our lives themselves, to ashes or dust. He found one photo of a woman with a dog, which Leavins purchased simply because, he explains, he could not reconcile himself to an image that held so much meaning for somebody at sometime being simply forgotten. And so he invented a story around the photo, imbuing it with a new meaning, which is exactly what we do to a photo, or a painting, or a story, we call a classic. Leavins’ droll act has a kind of muted beauty and profundity lurking beneath his otherwise snappy and amiable presentation. Elephant Theatre, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; though Dec. 14. (323) 960-7785. (Steven Leigh Morris)
Yoko Takashi
Cute With Chris: Live
Craig Schwartz
Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist
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THEATER PICK EAT THE RUNT What a discomfiting feeling it is to be reviewing a play in a theater with only two other people behind me — particularly a play about a theater critic. In Eat the Runt (which deserves a bigger audience), a critic called The Man (Peter Leake) — a name that serves up far more credit than is deserved — is kidnapped and brutalized for his scathing review in The Fresno Bee of a new work by a blowhard playwright named Buck Lone (Robert Riechel Jr., who did actually write this play). Mr. Lone may or may not have used a gun in the apprehension of the drama critic from his bed (he shows up in pajamas, blindfolded and gagged). We first see him being dragged into Lone’s grubby basement apartment (set by Adam Haas Hunter), which is punctuated by a poster of Samuel Beckett, who provides the scribe his dark inspiration. The Man is a smart, bitter fellow, an obit writer who takes occasional assignments as the paper’s drama critic. (The night before seeing this play, I heard a local arts critic in a theater lobby seething that his paper was now asking him to write obits — so, beyond the obvious metaphor for critics penning last rites, this is art imitating something that’s really occurring.) Lone’s oversexed, sadistic girlfriend, Hammer (Victoria Engelmaer), provides the third side of the triangle in Riechel’s hostage drama. Both the rudely portrayed Hammer (a smart, willing “slut”) and the evidently insane Lone give long-suffering drama critics a power that exists only in the hearts of self-absorbed playwrights who simply haven’t caught on yet that critics don’t make much difference. (That’s among the reasons their ranks across the nation are diminishing so quickly.) But Riechel hasn’t tried to write so much a mediation on the dire state of the arts as a comedy about the brooding imaginings of one deranged artist, which questions whether any creation can be fairly assessed beyond the narcissism of the creator and the cruelty of the judge. (Leake brings an impassioned credibility to his character’s deep conviction that the world would be a better place if only Lone would stop writing plays.) Riechel has pulled off the rare feat of directing and acting in his own play without running it off the rails. His performance is a terrifying portrait of the walking wounded, with little but vengeance for the critic in his head, along with visions of his play starring John Malkovich and being performed by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Hudson Guild Theater, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; through Dec. 13. (323) 960-7721. Living Edge Theaterworks and Red Bark Corp.(Steven Leigh Morris)
