BLINK & YOU MIGHT MISS ME You've seen Larry Blum before — in fact, I'd bet 20 bucks you've seen Blum on TV a dozen times. But unless you know who you're looking for, you might not have noticed him. When his one-man show about his career opens with footage of Meryl Streep's 2010 Golden Globes win and Blum struts out and asks, "Did you notice who took Meryl to the stage?" the audience does a double take. Blum is an on-camera talent escort, a hired gun who makes sure no star snaps a stiletto on her way to accept an award. Before that, he was a dancer, and earlier still he was a celebrity-obsessed gay Jewish teen in late-'60s New York who lost his virginity to a sailor in an alley behind a Nestlé truck. ("Every time I have a cup of cocoa, I still get hard," he reminisces.) Blum's good-humored, self-deprecating show has the patter of a dinner party guest who's told his stories a few too many times, and director Stan Zimmerman could get Blum's one-liners to sound more off-the-cuff. Still, Blum's got bite and it's lucky for him that among the many, many stars he dishes dirt about, at least half are dead or too old to bother calling a lawyer (Roseanne Barr, Raquel Welch and Dionne Warwick should stay away). Though in his youth he hoped to become famous, Blum doesn't paint himself as a has-been, never-was or will-be. He's proud to pay his rent by pursuing his dream — and by being a shameless residual-check hound who even joined Susan Lucci's fan club to help keep track of every nickel he was owed from all the talk shows that ran clips of him taking Lucci's arm during her big Emmy win. (He elbowed her husband out of the way for the honor.) Blum's cascade of quick clips keeps multimedia operator Matthew Quinn busy as they stack up to build a scrapbook of the busiest actor you'd never recognize. Asylum Lab, 1078 Lillian Way, L.A.; Fri., 8 p.m., thru May 27. (323) 960-7612, plays411.com/blink. (Amy Nicholson)
MICHAEL MCCREARY
Blink
Craig Schwartz
Burn This
GO BURN THIS Lanford Wilson was poetic even in his passing. The playwright, who premiered Burn This at the Mark Taper Forum 24 years ago, passed away on March 23, the night the Taper began previews of its first revival production of the play. Even the play's premise feels eerily symbolic: Shaken by the unexpected death of their friend Robbie, three friends find themselves confronting their paralyzed lives. Anna, consumed by her career as a dancer, struggles to create an exciting personal life, but chooses a safe lover in Burton. In a brilliant scene in which Anna awakes to find that the butterflies that had been pinned to her walls are still alive, Wilson introduces her unlikely savior: Robbie's runaway train wreck of a brother, Pale. Crashing wildly into Anna's loft after an all-nighter, Adam Rothenberg's Pale is the hot, pounding heart of this production: As the radiator hisses on, he tells Anna, "I deliver water. I put out fires ... but sometimes you just let it burn." Clutching at his heart, which is "fucking killing" him, and continuing on a coke-fueled rant that ranges from trash-talking the neighborhood to shedding tears over his brother's death, Pale finishes his first scene with a seduction so sexy that he's clearly throwing wood, not water, on this fire. Brooks Ashmanskas, as Anna's gay roommate Larry, is flamboyantly funny but still fleshes out the character beyond campiness. Ken Barnett's Burton is purposely boring. Zabryna Guevara's Anna, with her canned vocal inflections and forced emotion, is the stiffest of the cast. A special nod to Ralph Funicello's set, whose vast, underused space perfectly suits the characters' stunted lives. Coursing with adrenaline, Burn This spurs you as if a firecracker nearly went off in your hand. Live, Wilson shouts, NOW. Nicholas Martin directs. Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., dwntwn.; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m., Sat., 2:30 p.m. & 8 p.m., Sun., 1 p.m. & 6:30 p.m., thru May 1. (213) 628-2772, centertheatregroup.org. (Rebecca Haithcoat)
DADDYO DIES WELL Murray Mednick's poetic, philosophical comedy, the fifth in his series of eight Gary Plays, seems to take place in several spheres at once, ranging from the Amazonian jungle to the Andes, Santa Monica to the afterlife. Salty, aging hipster DaddyO (Hugh Dane) has been run down by a hit-and-run driver, and now he's dying. He summons his actor stepson, Gary (Casey Sullivan), to participate in an Indian soul-cleansing ritual involving the hallucinogenic, vomit-inducing drug ayahuasca. Also somehow present, physically or spiritually, are DaddyO's deceased wife, the ruefully benevolent Mama Bean (Strawn Bovee); his kindly but misanthropic shrink (Jack Kehler); and Gary's two ex-wives, Gloria (Elizabeth Greer), who is on a vision quest in the Andes, and the forbidding and judgmental Marcia (Melissa Paladino). Presiding over it all is the angel of death, Antonio (Peggy Ann Blow), who appears as an ice-cream vendor in a red jumpsuit, and as a masked Indian shaman. Mednick's play is always interesting as it circles, playfully and endlessly, around various life-and-death issues, but it's sometimes so personal as to be hermetic. Dane is engaging and funny as the play's most fully developed character, and the cast skillfully fleshes out the other inhabitants of his drama. Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Ave., Venice; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m., thru May 22. Produced by Padua Playwrights Productions. (323) 960-7724, plays411.com/DaddyO. (Neal Weaver)
