THEATER REVIEWS: THE AUTUMN GARDEN, VON BACH, DIVING NORMAL

Fairies With Children

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More About

• Zombie Joe
• Anne Gee Byrd Carrie
• Roddy Doyle
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Theater

THE PUB PLAYS: WAR Celebrated Irish novelist Roddy Doyle sets his play on the battlefield of a large, packed Dublin pub where rival teams of locals scuffle it out during a rowdy and riotous quiz night. As the empty bottles of Guinness pile up, the increasingly intoxicated participants trade wit, useless trivia and abuse, vying to claim bragging rights and an electric kettle. Doyle's play is ostensibly an energetic comedy, but flashpoint tempers, ferocious shouting matches, strident accusations of cheating, vulgar gestures and various colorful insults ("fookin' eejit!") wear you down after a while. Add the interspersed flashbacks to the casually abusive home life of the most volatile character, George (Tim Cummings), and suddenly all that bellowing isn't so funny, especially when his gentle wife, Briget (Kacey Camp), is cowering in the corner. Of course this is Doyle's point, but he makes it with a tightly clenched fist, pounding away. Alice Ryan is good as the cute barmaid who keeps the lecherous lads at bay with her arsenal of comebacks. Passable Irish accents from the hardworking cast of 16. Theatre Banshee, 3435 Magnolia Blvd., Burbank; in repertory with The Field, Fri., 8 p.m., Sat., 3 & 8 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Dec 12. theatrebanshee.org (Pauline Adamek)

GO  VON BACH Owen Hammer's zany farce tells the tale of Dr. Von Bach (think Dr. Frankenstein), whose adventures are being told in the 100th remake — "not counting the porn versions" — of his story. Fanatical screenwriter Minna (Maia Peters) is hell-bent on creating a definitive version, surpassing the legendary 1940 film, but they can't find an actor with sufficient charisma. She and studio exec Hillary (Kristina Hayes) decide to produce a computer-generated clone of the actor, Krupa, who played the role in 1940. But Krupa's grandson Connor (Jason Frost) claims to own the rights to grandpa's image. Eventually, the real Von Bach (Zoran Radanovich) returns to life, enraged that all the films and tales have presented him as a mad doctor, when he just wanted to serve humanity. This external story is merely a pretext for showing hilarious clips from the 1921, 1940, 1964 and 1993 films, plus the Andy Warhol version, the Abbott and Costello variant and the 1999 sci-fi rendition, not to mention Von Bach: The Musical. These delicious clips, directed by playwright Hammer and director Scott Rognlien, and featuring a cast of 24, become a nutty, slapstick history of the movies. Before the dust clears, Von Bach finds himself shilling for a drug to cure Twitching Ear Syndrome. Art/Works Theatre, 6569 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; thru Nov. 20. Produced by the Next Arena. (323) 805-9355. (Neal Weaver)