Theater Reviews: Bohemian Cowboy, Tartuffe, Black Women — State of the Union

Also, American Guilt, The Taming of the Shrew and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Wednesday, Feb 25 2009

AMERICAN GUILT Starting from the ending and then working its way back, Nick Mills’ take on the Bonnie and Clyde archetype deals with 20-somethings who are searching for meaning in their lives and try to find it through acts of defiance. The story centers on the relationship between Sara (Liz Vital) and Jonah (Eduardo Porto Carreiro), the former, a nymphomaniac who ironically refuses to curse; and the latter, a socially awkward depressive who has been seeing his therapist, Jane (Nicole DuPort), for seven years. Add to the mix Sara’s friends Evan (Jeff Irwin) and Hannah (Venessa Perdua), who end up as enablers in Sara and Jonah’s scheme and as a result are grilled by Keller (Sean Spann), a police detective investigating its devastating results. While there are a few genuine moments of humor and introspection in the writing, most end up sounding like a pseudo-intellectual whinings punctuated by pop-culture debates, further exacerbated by the typical early-20s rapid-fire ADD-esque way in which much of it is delivered. Though Mills’ directing his own work may have been a mistake, the cast members, especially Spann and DuPort, have good energy and fully throw themselves into the material. Theatre Unlimited Studios, 10943 Camarillo St., North Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; through March 14. (847) 800-1762. A Vitality Productions Production. (Mayank Keshaviah)

BLACK WOMEN: STATE OF THE UNION Judging from this uneven assortment of comedy sketches, dramatic playlets and poetry performance pieces, the state of identity politics for black women in the age of Obama hasn’t appreciably changed since Ntozake Shange’s landmark 1975 choreopoem, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” Buoyed by a talented ensemble and briskly directed by Nataki Garrett and Ayana Cahrr, the show is at its best when its political agenda is leavened with incisive humor or sharply observed characterizations. These include Lisa B. Thompson’s whimsical “Mother’s Day,” a satire of African-American maternal archetypes in the form of preprogrammed, nanny-bot androids Tamika Simpkins, Lee Sherman and the comically gifted Kila Kitu, who play, respectively, an overly doting Aunt Jemima mammy; a Condoleezza Rice–like hyperachiever; and a vintage 1970s black power militant; Nia Witherspoon’s “The Messiah Complex,” which takes a more serious tack as a lesbian rap star (Lony’e Perrine) recalls her younger, gender-confused adolescent self (Sherman) and how a troubled relationship with her estranged father (Paul Mabon) informed her sexual and artistic awakening; and Sigrid Gilmer’s clever “Black Girl Rising,” in which a wannabe superheroine (Simpkins) comes to Kitu’s Identity League to be assigned crime-fighting powers only to discover the roles allowed a black girl are somewhat less than empowering. Company of Angels, Alexandria Hotel, 501 S. Spring St., downtown; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through March 15. (323) 883-1717. (Bill Raden)

Scott Hall

Bohemian Cowboy

Annie Terry

The Increased Difficulty by The Increased Difficulty

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THEATER PICK BOHEMIAN COWBOY The original title of Raymond King Shurtz’s one-man show was The Gospel of Irony — which would have been a particularly ironic title, had it stuck, since there’s not a trace of irony in Shurtz’s unwaveringly sincere family memoir, now called Bohemian Cowboy. It’s all hinged to his efforts to understand the mystery of his father’s disappearance three years ago. The elder Shurtz drove six miles into the Nevada desert in his pickup, got out and, evidently, started walking. And now the younger Shurtz is trying to fathom whether this was suicide, or homicide and just some freak turn of events. The older man was not the best of fathers, his son explains through shards of poignant stories that are as compassionate as they are in gracefully written, and spoken. And the father was feeling some humiliation from the physical aftereffects of treatments for a form of cancer not specified in the play. The uncredited set contains raw wood slabs of some nondescript interior; when not showing family photographs, an overhead video monitor frames the action with an image of the boundless Mojave. Under Kurt Brungardt’s tender direction, background sounds to Shurtz’s fantastical mystery tour to the scene of his father’s disappearance include howling wind, the rat-tat-tat of search-and-rescue helicopters. The father was a musician, and Shurtz juxtaposes his saga with moving ballads from his memory, as well as his own original compositions. Near the beginning, Shurtz quotes William Styron saying that depression is the inability to grieve. Shurtz’s performance is, indeed, an elegy, a theater-poem of Styron-esque insight and elegance. He describes his playwright mother as a poet, while his father was merely “poetical.” He meets Jesus in the desert, a figure “with ebony eyes and crooked teeth,” while Hamlet accompanies him for some of the drive across the expanse. Hamlet, he says, does not care for Shurtz’s song honoring Ophelia. Shurtz performs all this with gentle, wistful intelligence while avoiding the morose or the melodramatic. Through this deeply personal story of fathers and sons, and marriages gone awry, Shurtz has stumbled onto a romantic allegory, not only for a man lost in the wilderness but for a country, dangerously tipsy, swerving over the broken center line of an open road, as though between nostalgia and despondency. Overhead, the canopy of stars remains, as ever, oblivious. Elephant Lab Theatre, 6324 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; Thurs.-Sun., 8 p.m. (no perfs March 13-14); through March 21. (323) 960-7744. A Theatre 4S Production. (Steven Leigh Morris)