Theater review: 'Troilus and Cressida' at the Whitmore-Lindley

In "Troilus and Cressida," those ever-audacious Porters of Hellsgate take on William Shakespeare's rarely produced Trojan War oddity. The results typify the assets and liabilities of both company and property.

Director Charles Pasternak has edited this multifarious play -- the third longest in the canon -- to just over 2 1/2 hours without losing narrative focus, a feat in itself. As is his wont, Pasternak uses the various levels of the Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center to smart effect, starting with a riveting tableau vivant prologue led by Helen (Eliza Kiss), she of the thousand-ships-launching face.

Designer Jessica Pasternak has a costumer's field day, leather vests, khakis and diaphanous gowns turned Grecian/Trojan with clubster chic. The entire large cast brings admirable determination and physical abandon -- most notably Napoleon Tavale's Hector and Matt Calloway's Achilles -- to the Bard's study of Troilus (Alex Parker) and his seriocomic romance with Cressida (Taylor Fisher) amid the bloody seventh-year turnaround of the iconic conflict.

Conversely, the work's mix of humor, violence, politics and poetry is anomalous to the extreme. Many passages echo more celebrated plays -- Romeo and Juliet on the balcony, Henry V in his tent on the eve of battle, and so forth -- only to pale by comparison, and the prologue's power doesn't exactly sustain and build thereafter.

Theater review: 'Finding Fossils' at the Lankershim Arts Center

"Finding Fossils," now receiving a respectable L.A. premiere at the Lankershim Arts Center, finds playwright Ty DeMartino examining the contentious relationship between a recent widower and his gay son. As such, this Road Theatre Company presentation, which plays in rep with "The Water's Edge," may resonate with sympathetic audiences, though its dramatic viability is variable.

It's Fourth of July weekend at the Monterelli family summer home, where patriarch Vincent (John Gowans) previously brought his ailing wife to die, without informing his long-estranged kids. This holiday, Gus (Chet Grissom), his soap opera director son, reluctantly arrives for one last stab at connecting with cantankerous Dad. It takes lakeside neighbor Johnny (Mark Costello), a maternal caregiver and contrast to the bickering Monterellis, to put things in perspective.

Under Suzanne Hunt's capable direction, "Fossils" suggests an inversion of the film "Beginners" by way of a bucolic dramedy -- think "On Golden Pond" killing off Ethel Thayer and giving Chelsea an inchoate gay brother. Grissom does yeoman work as Gus, most touching against Gowans' keenly understated curmudgeon, and Costello's easy bonhomie makes Johnny's character and situation the most interesting on stage.

That's a problem. Although author DeMartino intelligently charts the central dynamic, he hasn't given its clashes and revelations very high stakes or much surprise, and the over-explicated dialogue specifies some things better left inferred through the rising action. "Finding Fossils" isn't a bad play, but the literate familiarity and soft-cored impact seem more suited to the pages of the New Yorker. 

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-- David C. Nichols

"Finding Fossils," Lankershim Arts Center, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 25. $25. (866) 811-4111 or www.RoadTheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Photo: John Gowans, left, Chet Grissom and Mark Costello. Credit: Chris Goss.

Theater review: 'Fairy Tale Theatre: 18 and Over' at the Matrix

This review has been corrected. See note below.

Once upon a time, a newspaper called the Onion savaged cultural shibboleths of its day in print, while a television show called "Saturday Night Live" did the same in sketch-comedy format. They're still with us, barely, and fans of both entities should check out "Fairy Tale Theatre: 18 And Over" at the Matrix.

The brainchild of author-performer J. Michael Feldman, who suggests the love child of Sacha Baron Cohen and Sandra Bernhard, this Inkwell Theater offering serves up twisted fables about the foibles of modernity. Cheekily un-PC, sweetly scabrous, with titles such as "The Tale of the Bipolar Bear and the Co-Dependent Eskimo," the stories don't so much upend expectations as decimate them, to uproarious effect.

Assisted by three puppeteers (Jess McKay, Matt Cook and Tina Huang, all matched hoots), Feldman's fey host Percy Rutherford deploys  mime, sitcom and satirical attitudes with the same ease he and his colleagues wield designer Stephen Rowan's wonderful props and costumes.  A rotating roster of featured performers also participates, with pert Eileen Mullane taking top honors at the reviewed performance, especially  in "The Tale of the Monkeys and Their Pet," a cracked look at "dog people."

Theater review: 'The Water's Edge' at the Lankershim Arts Center

"Beware of Greeks bearing gifts," says one of the angrily bewildered characters in "The Water's Edge" at the Road Theatre. Talk about understatement. Playwright Theresa Rebeck's 2006 drama drop-kicks the House of Atreus into Showtime territory, with ungainly yet arresting results.

Seventeen years ago, Richard (an assured Albie Selznick) left Massachusetts following a tragedy that Rebeck withholds for much of Act 1.  Now a moneyed jet-setter, Richard returns to the lakeside home his father bequeathed him -- superbly realized by designer Desma Murphy with equal parts Rousseau and Wyeth --  younger girlfriend Lucy (fine-tuned Lauren Birriel) in tow, to reclaim both estate and estranged clan.

Erica (vivid Paris Perrault), his daughter, reacts with hostility tempered by Daddy's Favorite conflicts. Nate (Patrick Rieger, a find), his son, is more sanguine, though his halting speech and lack of ambition suggest deeper fissures. Critically, there is Helen (the valiant Nicole Farmer), Richard's wife, whose brittle civility masks an aquifer of bereaved fury.

Although stashing Aeschylus within postmodern family dramaturgy forces Rebeck to clash form and content to the near-breaking point, her facility with double-edged dialogue remains acute. Sam Anderson stylishly directs an expert design team, Kathi O'Donohue's lighting is particularly adroit, and an intense cast.

Theater review: 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' at the Lex Theatre

An idiosyncratic charge attends "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" at the Lex Theatre. We expect the Production Company to play around with established commercial fare, and this bluntly gripping revival of Martin McDonagh's dark comic Irish take on maternal-filial entrapment fulfills expectations.

Director-designer August Viverito essentially honors this first of McDonagh's trilogy of plays that transpire in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. The action occurs in 1990, in the threadbare rural cottage where embittered, middle-aged Maureen Folan (Ferrell Marshall) is caregiver to Mag (Judy Nazemetz), her deceptively ailing mother. Their decades-long cat-and-mouse game reaches critical mass when Maureen sees one last chance at love with sensitive Pato Dooley (Alex Egan).

Viverito maintains the script's mix of sardonic humor, psychological mystery and sociological detail, but risks certain ambiguities with against-type casting. The washed-out frump and mountainous golem respectively associated with Tony-winning originators Marie Mullen and Anna Manahan give way to Marshall's hearty, Juno-esque attractiveness as Maureen, and Nazemetz's ornate, near-baroque pixilation as Mag.

Theater review: 'As I Like It' at Macha Theatre

In "As I Like It," making its U.S. debut at the Macha Theatre, self-described "visionary poet, photographer, Genlux Magazine fashion editor and trendsetter" Amanda Eliasch turns her relatively interesting life into a notably ordinary performance piece.

Lebanon-born, England-raised Eliasch wrote the play -- curiously billed as "adapted for stage by Lyall Watson" -- produced it and designed the costumes. In a free-form monologue that hankers after Cocteau-like intimacy, the Woman (Elizabeth Karr) emerges from the skull sculpture on designer Trip Haenisch's elegantly fragmented set and shares life lessons with us. The daughter of an opera singer and granddaughter of a film director, veteran of seven years of drama school training and many inchoate relationships, including her father, this Eliasch surrogate clearly aims for a meaningful confessional.

Except the tacitly familiar tale lacks the traction it might have if Eliasch performed it herself. Karr, a competent actress whose quality merges Charlotte Rampling and Lauren Hutton, loses her accent and falls into singsong, though she withstands the outré black tutu-with-rose Eliasch puts on her and Lisa Zane, as the Singer who punctuates the text with octave-dropped arias.

Theater Beat looks at the best of 2011

The Times’ Theater Beat reviewers – Philip Brandes, F. Kathleen Foley, Margaret Gray, David C. Nichols and Charlotte Stoudt – spend the year prowling Los Angeles area theaters, especially the smaller ones, and providing their opinions of what they see there every week on Culture Monster and in the Friday Calendar section.

Here are some of their favorites (and a few less favored) of 2011 theatrical offerings.

Best New Play:

Charlotte Stoudt: Tie between “Pursued by Happiness,” by Keith Huff, staged at the Lankershim Arts Center by Road Theatre Company and “Extraordinary Chambers” at the Geffen

Kathy Foley: A tie between Nick Salamone's “The Sonneteer” at the Gay and Lesbian Center's Davidson/Valentini Theatre, and Tom Jacobson's “House of the Rising Son,” Ensemble Studio Theatre Los Angeles' production at the Atwater Village Theatre.

David C. Nichols: “House of the Rising Son” by Tom Jacobson

Philip Brandes: Penned in the early 1900's, the pair of one-acts from “Peter Pan” creator J.M. Barrie in “Barrie: Back to Back” weren't technically new, but leave it to Pacific Resident Theatre to re-discover long-neglected chestnuts with tremendous heart.

Margaret Gray: “Girls Talk” by Roger Kumble

Theater review: 'Winter Wonderettes' at the Carpenter Center

Just in time to offset low temperatures, "Winter Wonderettes" warms up the Carpenter Center with festive aplomb. Roger Bean's seasonal sequel to "The Marvelous Wonderettes" merrily rings its bells as a Musical Theatre West presentation.

First seen at the El Portal Forum in 2007, "Winter" transpires in archetypal Springfield, USA, circa 1968, where the title nightingales are the entertainment at Harper's Hardware Holiday Happening (impressively realized by designer Kevin Clowes' set and Jean-Yves Tessier's lighting).

Harper's employee Betty Jean (Julie Dixon Jackson) oversees things while concealing personal troubles. Usual ringleader Missy (Misty Cotton), giddy from her recent marriage, is almost able to relinquish control -- almost. Endearingly dizzy Suzy (Bets Malone), pregnant again, valiantly adheres to the program, while man trap Cindy Lou (Lowe Taylor) insinuatingly poses and posits blunt truths, usually at once.

Creator-director Bean's tinsel-slender premise pulls novelty holiday standards and audience participation toward a delicious twist as Act 1 ends. However, the key, as always, is the cast, an enchanting triple-threat foursome, their harmonies soaring under Daniel Thomas' musical direction. Jackson's bravura attack and nuclear belt are at peak form. Cotton's comic and vocal range continues to astonish. Malone retains a priceless zest, her "Suzy Snowflake" turn worth admission, and the wonderful Taylor finds the humanity within the siren, stilling the house at "All Those Christmas Clichés."

Theater review: 'On Holy Ground' at the MET Theatre

In "On Holy Ground," playwright Stephanie Liss addresses the Israeli/Palestinian conflict via two one-acts that present the perspectives of three women, a project that's admirable and daunting in its directness.

The first play, "Daughter of My People," might be a counterpoint companion piece to "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," humanizing a real-life figure, Hadassah co-founder and Youth Aliyah heroine Henrietta Szold. Equal parts poetic elegy and biographical dialogue, Liss' graceful albeit conventional script benefits immeasurably from the translucent Salome Jens, as ever an actress of rare emotional access, who embodies Szold with mercurial spirituality and profound honesty.

After intermission comes "Jihad," placing both sides of the divide unswervingly before us. Set in the settlement of Efrat, Liss' scenario concerns two bereaved mothers of only daughters: Shula (Lisa Richards), a tensely serene Orthodox Jew, and Reim (Abbé Rowlins), a resolutely fanatical Muslim jihadist.  The contrasts, and tacit similarities, could not be more vivid, which shores up the bluntly schematic structure while making the intersection of their losses doubly tragic. Richards has some volume issues, Rowlins' British accent occasionally intrudes, yet their commitment is unquestionable, wrenching at the final moments of sheer feral grief.

Theater review: 'Hermetically Sealed' at the Skylight Theatre

Various metaphors decorate "Hermetically Sealed" at the Skylight Theatre. From baked goods to operatic arias, they conceal real human pain. Kathryn Graf's carefully layered drama about a family in delicately poised denial, though slow to cohere, rewards forbearance.

Beginning at dawn on designer Jeff McLaughlin's excellent set, "Sealed" starts with Tess (Gigi Bermingham, never better) starting her day's tasks.  While preparing desserts for a catering job, Tess berates Jimmy (Wolfie Trausch), her eldest, over his all-night jaunt with a gay ne'er-do-well. After he retreats to his bedroom, Tess' routine resumes, fleetingly halted by a sudden spasm.

Enter 15-year-old Conor (the remarkable Nicholas Podany), spewing profanities while playing a video game, and slice-of-modern-life terrain seems imminent. Tess' married employers -- over-jovial Dale Sr. (Brendan Patrick Connor) and overbearing Dale Jr. (Julia Prud'homme) -- suggest postmodern satire. However, author Graf seeks to dramatize our need to normalize in the face of unbearable realities. Her script skirts teleplay tactics to reach a pivotal reversal, which lands with potent force.