What Is Art Good For? Two Plays Answer the Question

Images of characters eating words before spewing the pieces of paper from their mouths are genuinely intriguing. It's certainly another way of looking at storytelling. But attaching a layer of themes about schizophrenia and creativity to Hawthorne's comparatively simple, elegant story about the purpose of art and its relationship to commerce results in a grab-bag of meaning and significance. Its beauty is evident. Its point, less so. In its defense, this resembles what Oscar Wilde said about art.

I had an easier time with Fragments of Oscar Wilde at Zombie Joe's. The acting is more wobbly than at Ghost Road, but Cate's staging is really of a piece. Lit by floodlights — as are all the shows in this tiny venue — Cate gets to the heart of Wilde's aesthetic: art nouveau, Orientalism, silks and sex, moralists being tempted by sensuality. It all taps Wilde's struggles with his then-criminal homosexuality, his flights of fancy, his struggle with aging and appearances, with the eternal and the ephemeral, with the lust raging through him and how that might have some bearing on the art he was trying to create, and to its connection with God — his connection with God.

There are excerpts from Dorian Gray, "A Florentine Tragedy," "The Nightingale and the Rose," Salome and "La Sainte Courtisane" that weave through each other into a tapestry that's part homage, part examination of why so many artists continue to create objects and music and performances with no idea of how their worth will be assessed.

PHOTO BY VANESSA CATE

Willy Romano-Pugh and Anastasia Charalambous in Fragments of Oscar Wilde

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Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre

4850 Lankershim Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601

Category: Community Venues

Region: San Fernando Valley

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Artworks Theatre & Studios

6569 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90038

Category: Theaters

Region: Hollywood

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More About

• Oscar Wilde
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Vanessa Cate
• Theatrical Plays
• Theater

Such an activity contains elements of delirium and of virtue. Ghost Road Company and Zombie Joe's Underground deserve credit for both.

FRAGMENTS OF OSCAR WILDE | Adapted and directed by Vanessa Cate | Zombie Joe's Underground, 4850 Lankershim Blvd., N. Hlywd. | Sat., 8:30 p.m. (no perf April 6); through May 18 | (818) 202-4120 | zombiejoes.com

THE BARGAIN & THE BUTTERFLY | Conceived and directed by Katharine Noon | Ghost Road Company at Artworks Theatre, 6569 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd. | Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through April 7 | (310) 281-8341 | ghostroad.org