LA Weekly

ATTEMPTS ON HER LIFE Playwright Martin Crimp’s pastiche of cultural perceptions and judgments is composed of 17 disparate sketches united by the attempts of their various characters to describe an unseen woman named Anne, whose incarnations include terrorist, missing person and even a luxury car. The result is meetings and encounters between movie execs, journalists, cops, parents, et al., in which they disgorge memories or theories about Anne. Crimp’s script merely consists of dialogue written in sentences without stage directions or indications of who exactly speaks the lines. This gives a show’s director wide latitude for creativity, or a very long rope with a noose at its end — how it’s staged spells the difference between a concept and a gag. This production, fortunately, showcases the talents of two capable helmers, Bart DeLorenzo and Chris Covics, who use 17 explosively energetic actors in a tightly paced 90 minutes. The action plays out on Covics’ set, which mostly consists of suspended chairs and, on the stage’s sides, translucent panels that never quite hide the preparations and TV-watching of the ensemble’s noninvolved members. The funniest moments include the self-important film folk who are obsessed with creating a backstory to Ann, and a bilingual radio broadcast in which a woman haltingly proclaims the feminine empowerment bestowed upon her by acting in pornographic films. The problem with pastiche theater is that without a plot, or at least an editorial voice, the show cannot sustain its initial emotional or intellectual charge for very long. No matter how appealing Crimp’s scenes might be individually, when braided into a chain of other scenes their impact is diminished — the more so the further down on that chain they appear. Evidence Room and UNKNOWN THEATER, 1110 N. Seward St., Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 6 p.m.; thru Dec. 15. (323) 466-7781. (Steven Mikulan)


BURY THE DEAD In Irwin Shaw’s anti-war drama, first staged when the author was 23, dead soldiers rise from the grave to castigate the living about the waste and injustice of war. A play that lambasts economic and social injustice, it’s set in “the second year of the war that is to begin tomorrow night.” The specters (some genuinely haunting, courtesy of Jennifer Ernest’s makeup design) are first encountered by live infantrymen on burial detail. As news of the resurrection spreads, it engenders panicked denial among the powers that be, and later a damage-control operation in which the widows, mothers and sisters of these walking corpses are brought in to exhort them to return to their graves. The script, updated by the playwright’s son, Adam Shaw, makes mention of the war against terror and turns one of the martyred GIs into a woman (otherwise, much of it appears unchanged). Directed by Anthony Di Pietro, this well-intended production (accompanied by a post-show discussion series dedicated to the current fiasco) unfortunately comes across as more stagey than visceral. Some of this relates to the ideological and unprobing nature of the writing itself (the youthful Shaw had never been in the military when he wrote it), and some to the superficial (albeit sincere) quality of many of the performances. The most effective portrayals are among the women: Claudia Vazquez as Martha, whose unsatisfying marriage makes her feel cheated twice over, and Joy Sudduth as Julia, who kills herself rather than go on alone. Furthermore, TV and movies such as Saving Private Ryan and The Killing Fields have desensitized us to the kind of gritty images this production banks on. PARK LA BREA ACTIVITIES CENTER, 475 S. Curson Ave., L.A.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Dec. 9 (no perfs Nov. 23-25 & Dec. 8). (323) 549-5458. (Deborah Klugman)


HERO Luis Alfaro joins the growing number of playwrights trying to make sense of the Iraq war. (Is it even a “war” with a capital W?) To his credit, Alfaro doesn’t grind axes or use other people’s tragedies as parsley decorating some non-related agenda. His comedy about an L.A. man returning to his fragmented family is at times universal but often the dialogue only seems there for its own sake, as though Alfaro is avoiding the very issues he raises. Playwrights’ Arena at studio/stage, 520 N. Western Ave., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 & 7 p.m.; thru Dec. 16. (213) 627-4473. (Steven Mikulan) See Stage feature next week.


THE HISTORY BOYS Alan Bennett’s gorgeous play has landed in L.A. in a production that demonstrates the hazards of trying to replicate a vision born 7,000 miles away. Call it karaoke theater. Plug in new actors around an absent director (Nicholas Hytner of England’s National Theatre), and have a new director (Paul Miller) – who’s forced to function more like something between an assistant director and a stage manager – try to re-create the magic. Big surprise, the sizzle ain’t there. Live theater doesn’t quite work like a Starbucks franchise. Actors as fine as these deserve the liberty to reinvent Bennett’s play on their own terms, though their blurry dialects suggest these students and teachers have spent their youth wandering Britain rather than growing up in any one county. (One exception is Charlotte Cornwell’s world-weary teacher, Mrs. Lintott, who sparks with frustration and intelligence.) Bennett’s lush words and arguments concern some bright students in Britain’s public education system who find the game rigged with an iron ceiling when it comes to matriculating from north of England’s 1980s rust belt to Oxford and Cambridge. A Sheffield grammar school’s headmaster (H. Richard Greene) brings in Irwin (Peter Paige) to coach the latest brood of A-Level recipients for Oxbridge. Irwin’s technique is to invert commonly accepted truths, such as the belief that the terms of World War I’s peace treaty paved the way for World War II. “For that, Bristol welcomes you with open arms,” Irwin postulates, but not Cambridge. He rejiggers the theory into Britain being the arms-trade leader in the ’30s, and Germany being reluctant to wage war — just for the shock value and spectacle of the argument. Such flashy thinking, rather than serious inquiry, pits Irwin against the charismatic, eccentric General Studies teacher (Dakin Matthews), the results of whose random, inspired teachings can’t be “quantified” and whose penchant for fondling boys on the back seat of his motorbike brings him down in a number of ways. Unfortunately, much of Bennett’s graceful repartee sounds like barking, and Matthews is going by rote, though the musical chorales are perfectly orchestrated, with Alex Brightman (playing a diminutive and tormented homosexual student) masterfully crooning a couple of the classic pop ballads. Center Theatre Group at the AHMANSON THEATRE, 135 N. Grand Ave., Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 p.m.; Sun., 1 & 6:30 p.m.; thru Dec. 9 (no perf Nov. 22 & Dec 4-5). (2123) 972-7231. (Steven Leigh Morris)