Theater Reviews: Backstreet: The Musical, The Good Woman of Setzuan, South Pacific and Hamlet

GO  SOUTH PACIFIC So this tragic hero, a stern, sensible Princeton-educated U.S. Marine named Lt. Joseph Cable (Anderson Davis ) finds himself in the South Pacific amidst a herd of guys from the U.S. Navy. He'd love to get some intel on what the Japs are up to, because World War II is still in play. On the nearby mystical island of Bali Ha'i (mystical because that's where all the young daughters of the local French families are hiding), Cable falls for a native daughter named Lait (Sumie Maeda), who looks about 12 years old, but she's sure a good kisser who gently strokes his hair — and probably other parts as well. "I know what you're thinking," he chides skeptical onlookers; sure he does, because it is what we're thinking, too: You're a perv, dude. She's Cable's fantasy lover because she gazes at him adoringly and doesn't talk back. In fact, she doesn't talk at all, which is even better. Cable's anthem-in-song of love to barely pubescent Lait is "Younger Than Springtime," which is sort like an homage to the trafficking of children from exotic, faraway places. Rodgers' and Hammerstein's musical classic, presented by Lincoln Center Theater, is almost stunning for the window it offers onto the perverse America psyche, with its gardens of optimism, salvation complexes and sexual fantasies that come wrapped in a kind of national can-do solipsism. Michael Yeargan's classical storybook sets come with a backdrop of the expansive Pacific, idyllic and isolating, to unify the various settings and to conjure an American homeland far beyond the horizon. Barlett Sher's staging is a gift for a number of reasons. From this production, you can almost understand how we got into the quagmires of Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. Furthermore, his terrific ensemble performs with a vivacity that's nonetheless bereft of the showboating that comes attached to so many musicals. Even with Christopher Gattelli's musical staging with choreography that sashays and snaps, there's a sobriety and sincerity that reveal the musical for exactly what it is, and the 1950s era of Americana that spawned it. Terrific leading performances by Rod Gilfry and Carmen Cusack as the expat Frenchman and U.S.Navy ensign/nurse who play out the boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl — maybe they stick to the formula, maybe they don't. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 1 & 6:30 p.m.; through July 17. (213) 628-2772. (Steven Leigh Morris)

3 TRUTHS
There's your truth, the truth of your opponent and then there's the truth. Playwright Naomi Iizuka's mural of Angeleno characters transfers the Agamemnon legend to L.A.'s inner city. It attempts to examine where lies the "truth" behind the cycles of vengeance stemming from the random shooting of a promising 16-year-old Latino high school student by an African-American teenager (Joshua R. Lamont) — an act stemming from the young killer's subconscious angst of abandonment and despair. The play, capably staged in an irreverent oratorical style by Michael John Garcés, completes Cornerstone Theater Company's ambitious four-year "justice cycle" project. Many plots roll through the three-hour epic (wear a coat or bring a blanket to downtown's Water Court amphitheater venue, despite the summer climes). A lost-soul vagrant (Peter Howard) hears voices and envisions the spirits of the past, who assemble on the banks of the L.A. River. He's cursed by his Shakespearean understanding (which stems from his lack of medication) of the interconnectedness between the ghosts of the abused Tongva tribe and the haunting violence that plagues the city. Admidst many riffs of redundant oratory by multiple characters, he rails against the "white men" who decimated the idyllic life of the Gabrileneos. Actually, their downfall was provoked by a blend of the Spanish and their Mexican compatriots, all of whom had drifted north from the motherland; the Yankees finished the decimation that was already well under way by the time they arrived for their silver and gold rushes. That's one tiny example of Iizuka's oversimplifications, which stand in the way of the complex understanding of the "truth" her play seeks, leaving us with little more than already pervasive stereotypes. The other drawback is the prosaic and sometimes jokey language, and its attendant absence of poeticism — poetry being the bridge to the kind of wisdom that would have us leaving the theater richer for the time invested. In his adaptation of Oedipus the King to L.A.'s barrio and its environs, Oedipus El Rey (At Boston Court Theatre, earlier this year), playwright Luis Alfaro demonstrated a blending of slang and poetry, of contemporary life and ancient legend, which resulted in exactly the kind of conjuring Iizuka lays claim to. Here, the spirits of the past float through her net like the wind through a sieve. Still, there are some nice performances, including those by company stalwart Bahni Turpin, portraying a stand-in for Clytemnestra named Cleodora, and by Andres Munar as Orozco, her jittery son, a latter-day Orestes. Michael Hooker's blistering sound design brings the story's violence right home where it belongs — aided by the LAPD and its ghetto birds swirling above the action. Cornerstone Theater Company and Grand Performances at California Plaza, 350 S. Grand Ave., dwntn.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; through June 12. (213) 687-2159. (Steven Leigh Morris)