Theater Reviews: Blank, Palomino, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

Also, Four Places, Love, Loss, and What I Wore, 1951-2006 and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Thursday, May 20 2010

...continued from page 2

GO LOVE, LOSS, AND WHAT I WORE Ilene Beckerman's book, on which Delia Ephron and Nora Ephron based their "intimate collection of stories," is the kind you'd grab from the display near the register at a Barnes and Nobles, to serve as a dressy envelope for a birthday check to your goddaughter or an upgraded Mother's Day card. But if the recipient read it instead of tossing in onto a pile of similarly gifted minibooks, she'd find a classy little number, a J. Peterman catalog minus the pretentiousness. With sparse text and barebones sketches, Beckerman records her history through the clothes she and her female relatives wore. Director Jenny Sullivan constructs the stage version in much the same way: The star-studded ensemble wears black (there's an ode to the color, every woman's old faithful) while sitting in a straight line; and Carol Kane, who reads as Beckerman, handles the main prop, a "closet" full of the book's renderings situated on wire clothes hangers. But this is Nora Ephron, and chumminess quickly trumps austerity. The scenes themselves are ruminations on relationships thinly veiled as (mostly) funny riffs on clothes — Tracee Ellis Ross almost runs away with the show every time the spotlight's hers but particularly so with "The Shirt." Kane, who must be one of the most endearing actors ever, dances her monologues' transitions so delicately and adroitly you can only marvel. There are a couple of moments ("The Bathrobe," "Brides") during which all but those with a particularly voracious emotional appetite will find themselves choking on the syrup. Fortunately, though, the Ephron sisters have nimbly stitched together the scenes so that there's far more head nodding than eye rolling. Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Wstwd.; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 7 p.m.; Sun., 3 and 8 p.m.; through June 26. (310) 966-2412. (Rebecca Haithcoat)

GO 1951-2006 Writer-director Donald Freed's romance about a military veteran, Dave (Michael Matthys), who, in 1951, finds himself confined to a wheelchair in a grubby fourth-floor New York City walk-up, and the woman, Meg (Debra De Liso), who moves in across the hall. François-Pierre Couture's set shows the hallway with its grimy tile floor and slats emerging through the edges of the cement walls, offering an intersection of realism and surrealism that will play itself out in the drama — nicely aided by Christopher Ash's lighting schema. If you recall Bernard Slade's comedy, Same Time, Next Year about an adulterous affair that is sliced into scenes occurring at regular intervals through the decades — as the culture ages along with the characters — that's pretty much the template here. Sound designer John Zalewski serves up a soundscape of scene transitions that will stir any number of associations in people who have lived through them — the McCarthy hearings, news reports of the unfolding details of the JFK assassination, Nixon's resignation, Ronald Reagan's speech celebrating the continuity of our political process as the Carter administration handed over the reins of power. Dave is a Jewish anarchist who, in one scene, draws the attention of the FBI (Christopher Fairbanks), when he harbors a Black Panther Party member accused of shooting a police officer. Dave's is a sort of attraction of opposites to Meg, a lapsed Irish Catholic. The drama has far more literary and political resonance than dramatic momentum, largely because — with the exception of the FBI raid, when the characters must decide something in the moment — director Freed isn't entirely successful in drawing out the emotional tugs and pulls that lie beneath his very intelligent, often snappy and largely reflective dialogue, which says that this politically charged and appealingly smart couple have a deeply abiding love; I just got the sense that they were very friendly neighbors who enjoyed talking about politics. When Meg turns 86, a couple of hours after we saw her as a late–20-something, it's more than evident that time is the protagonist here, and we're seeing the aging of the progressive wing. I just wish that the romance were as persuasive as the history is poignant. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., dwntwn.; Thurs.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 3 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through June 13. (213) 489-0994, ext. 2. Produced by Latino Theater Company. (Steven Leigh Morris)

PHOTO BY CRAIG SCHWARTZ

David Cale as Kieren in Palomino: just a gigolo

More About

GO PALOMINO The title of writer-performer-director David Cale's solo performance about — among other people — a horse-drawn carriage driver in Manhattan may refer to the breed of horse that the womanizing driver, named Kieren, is steering. But the story he unfurls could just as easily be called Cougars. The 30-year-old Irish protagonist begins with a reference to his 1940s "come fly with me" fedora, boasting that it all starts with the hat. The man he's filling in for will later hear that reference in a written memoir penned by Kieren, and describe the author as an "asshole." And he's sort of right, but that certainly doesn't make Kieren's story any less engaging. Kieren tells of being approached by a woman named Marsha, who has a business proposition, for giving a "good time" to some female friends of hers, and he certainly gives them a ride. Cale is an unprepossessing yet hypnotic storyteller with a bald pate and slender build that belies the physical attraction his clients see in him. Yet when he leaves Kieren behind, and retells the story from the points of view of the various women whom Kieren seduces, with all their potent observations of his charisma, his sexual style, as well as his romantic inadequacies, the event isn't so much about any one character as it is about a world that's conjured in slices, and how the story is a slow reveal of an ever-more expansive world. This is, in some way, a one-man variation of Brian Friel's Faith Healer, somehow blended into Lady Chatterley's Lover. The piece constantly evokes the knot of romance and lust and commerce that are infinitely fascinating and impossible to untangle. Jason H. Thompson's projections are just perfect in their subtlety, offering a sense of place by being literary rather than literal, which matches many of the subtly embedded images in Cale's story. One recurring motif is a bird — one in a painting that's gifted to Kieren, which he later tries to sell; another is a pigeon, captured in Thompson's projection in flight. Not only does the literary/visual image have inexplicable beauty, but it's an emblem for the state of being embodied in all of Cale's characters, and an image for how we all push through life, on a wing and prayer so to speak, with the help and hindrance of the winds. Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 1 & 6:30 p.m.; through June 6. (213) 628-2772. Center Theatre Group. (Steven Leigh Morris)