Theater Reviews: Woyzeck, Daddy's Dyin' Who's Got the Will

Also, Kidnapped by Craigslist, and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Tuesday, Nov 25 2008

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KIDNAPPED BY CRAIGSLIST Katie Goan and Nitra Gutierrez’s romp of comedy sketches derived from Craigslist postings offers a facile glimpse at our cultural oddities. In New York, it was performed with four actors, but here, with the looser guidelines of the actors’ union, Actors’ Equity, director Lori Evans Taylor has hired 11 comedians for what’s designed as a kind of Victorian carnival with hints of the electronic age. Matt Maenpaa’s opulent set features a velvet red curtain, a precariously dangling chandelier and wooden crates and closets, through which the actors appear and retreat, as though we’re in something between an attic and the backstage area of Barnum and Bailey’s tent. Marina Mouhibian’s gorgeous vaudevillian costumes bring vivid texture to this circus of interpersonal desperation, perversity, fury and embarrassment. One scene is dedicated to an apology by a woman (Shelby Kyle) for passing wind, loudly, during a date and, again, while having sex. Amy Motta is all flash and tinsel as the carny barker guiding us through the network of misunderstandings and missed connections, including her sweetly rendered ballad requesting her new boyfriend to lay off the sodomy, and the faux-indignation of a gay man (Eric Bunton) having to endure in the stifling heat the sight of a teenage man lolling around nude near his bedroom window. These are highlights, but Taylor pushes the jokes too hard, beyond the range of their own humor, revealing the superficial essence of the project, like a less than enthralling episode of Saturday Night Live. Elephant Lab Theatre, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m. (added perfs Dec. 6 & 13, 10 p.m.; Dec. 18, 8 p.m.); through Dec. 20. (323) 860-8786. Produced by TheSpyAnts. (Steven Leigh Morris)

Jenny Oâ€™Hara

Shock Therapy

Peter Gref/Rialto PR

The Holy Mother of Hadley, New York

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LOST About to lose his job and seething with rage in general, and road rage in particular, Man (Kevin Vavasseur), while seeking a shortcut home, gets lost on a mountain road outside L.A. The fantasy dramatized in playwright Bernardo Solano’s ambitious, provocative yet ultimately pedestrian drama is so allegorical, Man may as well be Everyman, on a journey into the unknown. But Solano doesn’t have that morality play in mind; rather, the Columbian legend of La Madremonte — a mythical goddess and punishing defender of the environment. Here, she’s named Woman (Marissa Garcia), a sensuous beauty whom Man picks up on the side of the road after noticing her stranded when her car breaks down. Her erotic come-ons (want a bite of my nectarine? – as she slurps the juice while cradling the fruit in a napkin) render the drama a head trip in which reality, Man’s reality, that is, slip-slides in and out of imaginings, including a car crash that may or may not be real, sort of like his passenger. This is a portrait of a lonely man with an ungrateful wife and a hole in his heart, bruised to the point of maddening defensiveness while barely clinging to some fragile code of loyalty, and being tested by this phantom-in-distress. The drama, directed by Tina Sanchez, played out in two adjacent car seats, is too static to be cinematic, despite an impressive ride-film backdrop of a mountain road at dusk, perpetually slipping away, projected behind the car seats. Nor is the play particularly theatrical for exactly the same reason — two people sitting still and having a conversation. The dramatic motion is as illusory as the play’s female phantom. The Genet-like psychological gamesmanship between the pair wears down after the metaphors have sunk in, which is by intermission, if not sooner. These dramatic potholes might not have been so evident were the chemistry between the actors more convincing. Garcia possesses a snappy, freewheeling seductiveness and mystery that keep bouncing off the steely facade of Vavasseur’s resistance. He’s a man-child, perpetually half a beat behind her, and it’s hard to discern if that’s an issue with the character or the performance. Sanchez has cast four actors who rotate with different partners each performance, so there may yet be a sizzling combination that will lift the play into something transcendent. Alexandria Hotel, 501 S. Spring St., Third Floor, downtown; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m. (323) 883-1717. A Company of Angels production. (Steven Leigh Morris).

SHOCK THERAPY Psychiatrist Colin (Scott Paulin) and his painter wife, Becca (Lisa Robbins), are throwing a Labor Day bash. But Colin specializes in treating neurotic celebrities who are so needy and demanding that they keep him glued to his cell phone. He’s too preoccupied to notice that his daughter (Sophie Ullett) is planning to run away from home, or that his wife is involved in a love affair with his boorishly obnoxious colleague Branch (Gregg Henry), who specializes in dubious drug therapies. Also on the premises are April, a famous woman psychiatrist (Cece Antoinette), in a shamefully underdeveloped role), and mysterious stranger Jack (Matthew Glave), an ex-con who takes them all hostage. He’s hell-bent on extracting financial restitution for the death of his cellmate, who supposedly died as a result of Branch’s drug experiments. Playwright Tom Baum seems to have intended to write a satire on our “therapized world,” and there is some amusing psychobabble, but any ideas the playwright harbored are lost in the trappings of a lame, old-fashioned farce. Director Jenny O’Hara has gathered an able cast and mounted an expert and expensive production but they can’t conceal the play’s meager purpose. Matt Maenpaa and Adam Hunter provide the airily handsome set, with detailed sound design by Matthew Richter. Lillian Theatre, 1076 Lillian Way, Hollywood; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 7 p.m., through Dec.7. (323) 960-4420 or www.plays411.com/shocktherapy. (Neal Weaver)