Theater Reviews: More Lies About Jerzy, Second, Supernova

Also, U.S.S. Pinafore, Den of Thieves, Man Verses Moon and more

Comments (0) By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics Thursday, May 27 2010

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FORBIDDEN ZONE: LIVE IN THE 6TH DIMENSION "What was banal can, with the passage of time, become fantastic," Susan Sontag famously noted. At least such is the hope of adaptor Michael Holmes and director Scott Leggett in their anarchic musical tribute to film director Richard Elfman and composer Danny Elfman's failed, 1980 dadaist sci-fi fantasy, Forbidden Zone. A crude, lewd and urgently outré attempt at a John Waters–like burlesque of middle-class mores, the movie stands as an exercise in clownish impudence; its story of a Venice Beach family's adventure in a bizarre, Alice in Wonderland dimension they enter via a portal in their basement, is almost beside the point. Holmes happily excises some of Elfman's more gratuitous racial and anti-Semitic caricatures while contributing judicious narrative tweaks, primarily in expanding the character of Satan (a leering Marz Richards) into a lipsticked, vamping, Tim Curry–esque narrator/emcee. Leggett and his talented production-design team provide the polish, including the glam dazzle of Wes Crain's costumes and Kat Bardot's makeup, and the cartoon razzle of Tifanie McQueen's scatological set. The pleasure comes courtesy of musical director Ryan Johnson and his 14-piece band, Natasha Norman's Max Fleischer–inspired choreography, and an enthusiastic cast that sings and dances the collection of mainly early–20th century pop tunes only lip-synched in the movie (Bryan Krasner's rendition of the Yiddish Theater classic, "Giter Brider Itzik," is a standout). The problem is in Holmes' cultist fidelity to his source, which carries over into Elfman's sneering contempt for his characters, thus robbing the show of the heart and pathos it so desperately needs. Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, L.A.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., June 13, 7 p.m.; Sun., June 20, 7 p.m.; through June 26. (310) 281-8337. (Bill Raden)

MAN VERSES MOON In a theater, a playwright-director named Federico Lorca (Adrian Kaley) is trying to work actors through an interpretation of a play that looks very much like Blood Wedding, while being warned that soldiers are poised to arrest him as a dissident. This theater is no haven. And writer-director Dan Oliverio's collage of Lorca's play, his poems, classical mythology and homegrown surrealism sends Lorca and his company into netherworlds and moonscapes. The "theater" itself is claustrophobic and barren — compared to when the set's "walls" roll away to reveal a dreamscape of cascading sheets and kaleidoscopic lighting. Designer Chris Covics employs rigs and pulleys and actors to move drapery and flats into some scintillating compositions. Dan Mailley's costumes — grounded in the 1930s but also taking off into flights of fancy — front-load the event with exotic appeal. This is conspicuously a labor of love on Oliverio's part, an homage to Lorca and the various agonies he suffered — including what's generally believed to be his execution at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. But the portrait and the purpose are lost in the coming together of texts and styles, so that the result is less an understanding than a feeling: one of lunacy (to borrow from the play's dominant image of the moon) that's nonetheless locked in one of the prisons of 1930s Spain. The event presumes a depth of knowledge that would be better teased out in the piece itself. The kind of romantic/surreal horrors Lorca wrote about are no strangers to our century. What's so odd about this production is that they appear to belong to place and time far away and long ago. Unknown Theater, 1110 Seward St., Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 6 p.m.; through June 26. (323) 466-7781. (Steven Leigh Morris)

PHOTO BY ED KRIEGER

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GO MORE LIES ABOUT JERZY This West Coast premiere of David Holmes' fascinating drama about whether truth lies in facts or in fiction hangs on the title performance of Jack Stehlin as Jerzy Lesnewski — obviously based on the late Polish novelist-screenwriter Jerzy Kosinski, and the scandals surrounding what he eventually claimed was his fictional Holocaust memoir, The Painted Bird. Either by omission or design, Kosinski neglected to clarify at the outset that the memoir was anything but autobiography — until, according to Holmes, Poles from his past (Jordan Lund and Cameron Meyer) showed up in New York, peeved that the famous author was discrediting the very people who had protected young Jewish Jerzy from the Nazis. Aside from a swirl of wives and mistresses (Meyer and Kristin Malko) orbiting the womanizing author, the play drives along the investigation by journalist Arthur Bausley (Adam Stein) — once a fan and eventually an investigator — clearly troubled by Jerzy's continuing penchant to play fast and loose with the facts. They won't ask if he is lying, Arthur goads him, They're only going to ask why is he lying. Holmes plays just as nimbly with the facts as Kozinski did, which would be an affront if Holmes were really out to discredit his protagonist, as the Village Voice did in 1982. (That discrediting is a central issue in the play, which anachronistically unfolds between 1972 and 1974.) In the Voice, Geoffrey Stokes and Eliot Fremont-Smith published an article accusing the five-time best-selling author not only of having denied co-authorship or editor credit to the English "translators," who may have actually written The Painted Bird, based on Kozinski writings in Polish, but they also claimed that Kozinski plagiarized his short story (made into film), Being There, from 1932 Polish best seller The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma — which few people outside Poland knew about. Holmes' Jerzy has a potent defense and an almost tragic downfall — made all the more so by Stehlin's gregarious, petulant and charismatic interpretation, with just the right tinge of Polish dialect. Argues Jerzy: Truth does not lie in facts but in symbols and myths and legends — an argument he could have lifted from W.B. Yeats, who said much the same. Holmes' journalist tries to psychoanalyze why Jerzy would make stuff up so habitually — perhaps a war trauma or something — and Jerzy ridicules that process as petty psychoanalysis. The degree to which Jerzy may be right is the degree to which this play gets very interesting, veering from its dangerous trajectory of celebrity bashing. David Trainer directs an efficient production with enough momentum to compensate for its tangled relationships. But it's the play, and Stehlin, that are stage center. And speaking of truth, they probably shouldn't clink those plastic champagne tumblers when toasting. That rings even less true than many of Jerzy's excuses. Circus Theatricals at the Hayworth, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; through June 26. (323) 960-7788. (Steven Leigh Morris)