Theater Reviews: Bleeding Through, Answer the Call, Exit Strategy, The Changeling

GO  BLEEDING THROUGH Adapted from Norman Klein’s novella of the same title, this world premiere, co-written and co-directed by Theresa Chavez and Rose Portillo, explores historical Angelino Heights (not coincidentally the location of the theater) and the ghosts of its glamorous past. The Unreliable Narrator (David Fruechting) introduces us to the world of the play as it moves fluidly between the past and present. He speaks with Ezra (Ed Ramolete) and Molly (Lynn Milgrim), now two elderly residents of the neighborhood, as he researches a potential murder. Through their memories we learn of a younger Molly (Elizabeth Rainey), who came from Indiana and worked in men’s clothing, which naturally brought her into contact with a number of men, including husbands Jack (Brian Joseph) and Walt (Pete Pano), as well as Jack’s father and longtime customer Harry (James Terry). Chavez and Portillo’s expansive “surround” set, designed by Akeime Mitterlehner, offers a unique staging that, along with the accompaniment of live musicians Scott Collins and Vinny Golia, immerses the audience in the noir world. Francois-Pierre Couture’s angular lighting, Pamela Shaw’s wonderfully detailed costumes, Claudio Rocha’s well-integrated videography and Diane Arellano’s installation of historical artifacts — which the audience is allowed to explore at intermission — all enhance the ambiance as well. Rainey and Milgrim play their double roles with aplomb, but the piece’s main drawback is the lack of dramatic momentum in the writing, making older Molly’s line, “at some point, a place becomes more important than a person,” ring all the more true. Shakespeare Festival/L.A., 1238 W. First St., L.A.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through November 22. (800) 595-4849. About Productions. (Mayank Keshaviah)

GO  THE CHANGELING This unsparing melodrama was the hit of 1622 and still packs a punch today. Thomas Middleton (who co-wrote the play with William Rowley) also helped the Bard to revise Measure for Measure. Like that perverse comedy, The Changeling welcomes the audience to a romantic comedy just before it about-faces and bites them in the behind. Beatrice-Joanna (Melissa Chalsma) is a rich man’s daughter pursued by three suitors: her father’s manservant (Luis Galindo); her fiancé (Tom Mesmer); and her lover (Sean Pritchett). She provokes the first to murder the second so she can marry the third, but that foul deed can’t go unpunished. What follows is a glut of lurid tragedies: bribes, rape, paid sexual services, shootings, arson, truth potions, stabbing, dismemberment, more stabbing, and suicide. Across town, an asylum owner (Roberto Bonanni) trusts his warden (Bob Beuth) to keep his younger wife (Katherine Leigh) chaste, not knowing that his employee lusts after her. He’s not alone, as two lotharios (Richard Azurdia and Rajan Velu) feign madness to get alone time with the asylum owner’s lovely bride. Though the play predates Origin of the Species by 237 years, you can feel it wrestling with questions Darwin would eventually make public, namely the mystery of female choice and the suspicion that humanity is just an animal operating on passion, jealousy and instinct. It feels natural then that director Pat Towne has updated the setting to Victorian England. When the condescending Beuth calls his inmates beasts and checks their teeth like cattle, we’re reminded of the haves’ defense of Social Darwinism. Aside for some lighting cues that muddied the end of Act I, this is a dark and fascinating production well-served by the strong ensemble and Mikiko Nagao’s steam-punk costuming. Lillian Theatre, 1076 Lillian Way, L.A.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through November 8. (818) 710-6306. Independent Shakespeare Company (Amy Nicholson)

EXIT STRATEGY Because the elderly are “invisible” in our culture, they can pay for their rent and subscription drugs by engaging in any number of criminal activities, and also give their lives a much-needed adrenaline rush of rebellion against both society and the metaphysical cruelties of aging. Such is the sweet theory behind Bill Semans and Roy M. Close’s sitcom, Exit Strategy. Casey Stangl’s staging is a bundle of paradoxes: James (nicely played by James B. Sikking) is a broke and broken queen who’s a poet and an ex–college professor; he was removed from his post because of a sex scandal. All he has left is his libido. After he’s kicked out of a gay bar, James laments with faux Beckettian ennui: “Sometimes I think I’ve sucked my last cock.” He’s hanging on day to day in the Midwestern rooming house (realistic set by Keith Mitchell) managed by Mae (feisty Debra Mooney) — a rooming house that’s just been sold to a developer. So they’re both facing eviction when Alex (John C. Moskoff) arrives for a brief stay with a benignly criminal plot to earn them all some money. Is Alex a con man? Are the duo being duped by his continual pontifications on how to age well, and his philosophies of squeezing the marrow out of every day, as well as how to avoid staining oneself after urinating? There’s far too much gratuitous explaining going on, so that it deflates whatever mysteries may swim in the subtext of this intriguing situation and these very nice people. Stangl’s languid pacing is both this production’s curse and its blessing. These characters can talk a scene to death, but when they sit, waiting for the play’s most suspense-filled resolution, they speak in non sequiturs, and the play starts to take on the enigmatic, elliptical poetry of David Storey’s beautiful Home, a kind of abstract liturgy about waiting, and dying and living. For a mystery or a metaphysical rumination, the play is far too obvious. Yet for a sitcom, in which much is expected to be explained, it moves too slowly. It’s a tender and humane comedy. If only it were clearer in its convictions, so that they didn’t have to be spoken as though in neon supertitles. Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank; Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.; through November 15. (818) 955-8101. (Steven Leigh Morris)