Theater Reviews: The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Crucible, Goodbye, Louie ... Hello

SILENT SKY One of the cardinal sins in playwriting is allowing the audience to get too far ahead of the story. Any but the tautest of grips on the narrative leash will exact its toll in attenuated tension and let loose the dogs of boredom. So it is with playwright Lauren Gunderson’s feminist-flavored rehabilitation of pre–World War I Harvard astronomer Henrietta Leavitt (Monette Magrath) in this harmless and anodyne commission by South Coast Rep, now playing on its main stage. In real life, Leavitt was one of Harvard astronomer Edward Charles Pickering’s all-women “human computers” engaged in number-crunching drudgery while actual telescope time was reserved as a bastion of male privilege. The play presents her as a poet and frustrated dreamer whose determination to circumvent the unseen Pickering during her off-hours condemns her to spinsterhood but results in “Leavitt’s Law,” the critical astronomical yardstick that would enable later scientists to fix our place in the limitless expanse of the cosmos. Colette Kilroy and Amelia White lend fine support as the heroine’s closet-suffragette computer cohorts, and Nick Toren is suitably spineless as the romantic interest who is both smitten by Henrietta’s rebellious wit and threatened by her superior intellectual ability. Costumer David Kay Mickelsen contributes meticulous period detail to director Anne Justine D’Zmura’s sleek production, while York Kennedy’s lights and John Crawford’s projections animate the evening firmament spinning above John Iacovelli’s spare, rotating turntable set. All that moving spectacle can do little, however, to help the overly familiar text catch up to an audience left waiting at the final blackout for the work to add up to something greater than the sum of its wiki facts. South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m., Tues., Wed. & Sun., 7:30 p.m., Sat. & Sun., 2:30 p.m., thru May 1. (714) 708-5555, scr.org. (Bill Raden)

TARTUFFE A few minutes into Jon Kellam’s rendering of Molière’s classic farce, you know you’re not in for a routine production. There’s the flowery, drawn-out introduction by Steven Porter, spoken in French with audio translation; the colorful mass of balloons heaped at center stage; and sound effects from the “noisy corner,” courtesy of Jef Bek, who plays various percussion instruments and keyboard organ. All nice touches in this tale about a hypocritical scoundrel who by dint of pious pretense and subterfuge wreaks havoc on a respectable Frenchman and his family. However, Kellam has his sights on underscoring the work’s timelessness via David Ball’s breezy adaptation, which bestrides the author’s 17th century, our own era and various points between. The effect is more of an imposition than an illumination. It’s also interlarded with much that is digressive and not at all funny. The physical comedy is effectual — to a point — but it starts to wear especially thin in the languorous Act 2, along with Bek’s seemingly endless potpourri of sound effects. Cast performances are lively and engaging, the one exception being a flat Pierre Adeli (who in all fairness was brought in a week earlier in place of the ailing Scott Harris), in the critical role of Tartuffe. Fully memorable are Ben Kahookele’s gorgeous costumes, and Mary Eileen O’Donnell’s smattering of props, which are cleverly designed and used. The Actors’ Gang, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m., thru April 30. (310) 838-4264, theactorsgang.com. (Lovell Estell III)

Goodbye, Louie ... Hello

The Human Voice (La Vox Humaine)

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WALLOWA: THE VANISHING OF MAUDE LERAY An artist obsessed with chasing a story typically results in one of two outcomes: The director emerges from the dark forest of creation on top of the mountain (see Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan), or the artist delves so deep within so as not even to recognize being lost. Unfortunately, Son of Semele Ensemble’s latest world premiere, a collaboration with playwright Oliver Mayer, falls into the second category. Director Don Boughton conceived the play after reading an article about a 76-year-old woman who disappeared in Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains, home to Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce Tribe. Even after an extensive search, no trace was found of the missing woman. Conducting interviews with locals and interweaving those with the myths of the region, Boughton and SOSE built a story around “Maude LeRay’s” mysterious vanishing. The staging is a blend of those two elements: the factual — rescue teams gathering, her husband, Howard (Alexander Wright), being questioned; and the mystical — cast members double as animals that talk to and spirit Maude (Dee Amerio Sudik) to and from the mountain’s nooks and crannies. The material doesn’t stretch far enough to fill a 90-minute play, but the bigger problem is the subject matter itself. Though something like a theme surfaces three-quarters of the way through (after Maude tells the animals she wants to go home to “WalMart runs” and other mundane tasks, one asks, “You sure you want this?”), it’s one Thornton Wilder did too famously in Our Town to recycle. Whether the theme is supposed to be more or less important than the story, the company must give the audience a reason to care as much as the creators do. Son of Semele Ensemble, 3301 Beverly Blvd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 4 p.m., thru May 8. sonofsemele.org. (Rebecca Haithcoat)