Seminar at the Ahmanson and Creation at Boston Court, Reviewed

Molly Sweeney is probably the best of these stage adaptations for its ability to preserve the tone of Sacks' writing — eloquent, kind and conveying an almost childlike wonder at how the mind works, at how it connects to the heart, at what becomes enhanced when a tiny corner of the brain is found deficient. These are stories of neurological give and take that address the mysteries of personality.

In Molly Sweeney, everybody is kind, and through that kindness a tragedy unfolds from one doctor's hubris, and one husband's infatuation, as both try to restore a woman's sight. Like blind Tiresias in Oedipus the King, Molly was seeing just fine before they intervened.

PHOTO BY CRAIG SCHWARTZ

Aya Cash and Jeff Golblum in Seminar

Location Info

Map

Boston Court

70 N. Mentor Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91106

Category: Music Venues

Region: Pasadena and vicinity

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Ahmanson Theatre

135 N. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Theaters

Region: Downtown

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More About

• Oliver Sacks
• Kathryn Walat
• Theresa Rebeck
• Theatrical Plays
• Theater

Michael Michetti directs a fine, lean production of Creation — tenderly wrought, subtly performed, brimming with ideas. Yet these people are small and slightly tawdry, and this imposes on Sacks' more generous voice. It's a soap opera posing as an opera.

I'm not sure what happened to Theresa Rebeck's Seminar at the Ahmanson. In New York, on Broadway, with Alan Rickman as the sadistic guru of a high-end workshop for aspiring scribes, there emerged the portrait of a world-weary, sexually precocious, washed-up, literary "leader" of waiting-to-be-abused acolytes. It was a view of a demonic world fueled by jealousy and bitterness containing a single moment of generosity, redemption and purpose — what Ian would have called "divine."

Here, it appears to be in the wrong theater. If Rebeck's endeavor is to invite us into these writers' intimate, awful, internal world, that's hard in a barn where everybody's wearing a body mic. Some of Rebeck's jokes still play, but so what?

I just couldn't make sense of Jeff Goldblum's swaggering performance as the seminar leader. He said mean things jocularly, often delaying the last word of a punchline for a second or two after the sentence it was once attached to. That might have been a character idiosyncrasy, but it sounded like he didn't quite know what he was saying, which might explain the swagger.

Nor could the supporting cast (Aya Cash, Greg Keller, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe and Jennifer Ikeda) offer much support in what looked like a sitcom about writers.

Sam Gold directed the productions both here and in New York. I wonder what he was thinking, and I don't mean that stridently. I really do wonder.

CREATION | By Kathryn Walat | Presented by Theatre @ Boston Court, 40 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena | Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; through Nov. 11 | (626) 683-6883 | bostoncourt.com

SEMINAR | By Theresa Rebeck | Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., dwntwn. | Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 1 & 6:30 p.m.; through Nov. 18 | (213) 628-2772 | centertheatregroup.org