In the heart of West Hollywood at the Celebration theatre known for its gay, lesbian, and transgender productions, men roam wild and free on the stage. Focused around 10 gay men living in urban America (even though the play was originally for the British stage) F*cking Men brings to light issues we all face in our relationships, whether, gay, straight or completely asexual. Is monogamy natural? Is it necessary? Is promiscuity the answer?

Written for the Stages of London, Joe DiPietro brings together men from all different backgrounds: a soldier, a prostitute, a grad student, a college kid, a high school teacher, a banker, a porn star, a playwright, a movie star, and a talk show host. While many may find the graphic dialogue, sexual depictions and naked men who float in and out of the scenes hard to stomach, the way in which it is presented is so well done that it seems almost natural to see so many penises on the stage.

Broken up into 10 vignettes no more than 10 minutes long, each scene told a story of connection. Every one of us is striving for meaningful connections in our life but sometimes it’s hit or miss. Each of these mini stories was brilliantly spun together. Two characters would be in a scene, maybe a scene where a soldier hooks up with a male prostitute only to find he likes it and then that soldier would be in the next scene with another character discussing his experience of realizing he‘s gay. Then the man he was speaking with would be in the next scene with a new character, and so on.

“The show was brought to me by Calvin Remsberg who directed the piece, I read it and said ‘Yes, you can do this here!’” said Michael Shepperd emphatically, the Artistic Director and producer of the play.

What makes this play more striking is the minimal set design. With a few blocks on stage that are moved with every scene to convey a different space it shows you don’t need much to make a play fascinating. It also shows how amazing the cast is. With a sparse setting and good dialogue each of these actors steals the spotlight for their short 15 minutes on stage.

Johnny Kostrey who plays the soldier does a stellar job showing a man torn by his duty to the army and his desire for male companionship. His mere presence conveyed a conflicted person coming into his sexuality. Brian Dare, his counterpart in the first scene, falls into the role of a male prostitute with ease. His delivery is natural and spot on, making his lines heartfelt at the same time that they are comical. Mike Ciriaco, the grad student, brings life to the problems people have with honest relationships, even though some say it’s the best policy. His acting is solid and convincing. Michael Rachilis, the college student embracing his newfound bi-sexuality, makes the play light, humorous and exciting as he tries to have sex with everything that walks across his path. Sean Galuszka, the high school teacher and Michael’s bouncing board in his second scene, is wonderful conveying a man confused by his long time relationship’s new development. Understanding what it’s like to have an open relationship, Sean brings innocence and wisdom together in an artful way.

Sean’s long time partner, played by David Pevsner, the banker, has a true charm that shines on stage. Like so many people, he battles with monogamy in a gripping way. In David’s second scene he has a liaison with Jeff Olson, the porn star, who has a stellar body and compliments David well. AJ Tannen brings laughter and anxiety to the play as the struggling playwright. His nervousness reverberated throughout the audience realistically and humorously. AJ’s character experiences a dream come true when he meets an actor who likes his work, played by Chad Borden, who shows how difficult it can be to come out in a very public light. In Chad’s second scene Gregory Franklin plays a talk show host who Chad utilizes to tell the world his secret. Gregory’s portrayal is heartfelt, as he struggles with his lover’s death. He made the sadness truly palpable.

“I’ve really enjoyed working on the show as I’ve gotten to play a character that I wouldn’t normally be able to read for. The cast has made it a safe playground to work on that character, ” said Brian Dare who opens and closes the play

Calvin Remsberg exceptionally directed Joe’s play, superbly written and engagingly conveyed. With every passing scene the universal theme became increasingly apparent. While this play deals with gay couplings it has a message that can resonate with everyone. No matter what your preference is, relationships and human interactions are hard, meaningful, memorable, painful and always important as we move along this road called life.

The play’s title is Peace, but it might as well be Shit, Weed, and Peace, because that more accurately describes the major themes of the play in order of emphasis and importance. The story follows Ty Dye (John Fleck), a crazed pot farmer who, having grown sick of the constant wars plaguing the world, decides to travel to the top of Mount Olympus in search of the goddess Peace. Riding on the back of a gigantic dung beetle, Ty Dye reaches the heavens only to hear from the very flamboyant god, Hermes (or rather, Hermés), that Peace has been captured and is being kept away from humanity in a cave by Mars, the god of War. Enter Mars, looking not unlike an oversized Marvin the Martian wearing an Army officer’s uniform emblazoned with a swastika and sheriff’s badge. Now Ty Dye must free Peace from War’s evil clutches with the help of some Guatemalan gardeners (writers Montoya, Salinas, and Siguenza), a feisty Malibu housewife-cum-Greek chorus leader (Amy Hill), and a trio of Mariachi ladies (Las Colibrí).

While “Peace” never ceases to entertain, the show’s writers leave no pun, poop joke, sexual reference, or curse word unused and this often leads to guffaws but not infrequently leaves you wondering what it’s all about. Where this play has plenty of opportunities to insert frank political commentary into this adaptation, “Peace” frequently gets mired in its own cleverness and at times nearly forsakes its purpose. It isn’t until the play’s end that the true message of “Peace” reasserts itself on stage, and by then it seems almost a heavy-handed afterthought. If you want catharsis you may be out of luck, but if you want a case of the warm fuzzies, this play’s end won’t disappoint.

The fact is that Culture Clash knows how to make theater fun, and for that they deserve a great deal of praise. “Peace” is a truly unconventional and raucous take on an ancient play that may fall short of inspirational but hits its comic mark.

Aristophanes’ Peace (official website)
Updated / Performed by Culture Clash
Thursdays, Friday, and Saturdays at 8pm
The Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater at the Getty Villa

Economic strife. Women having children they can’t support. What could be funnier? I mean, really, a woman having eight kids when she already has more than she can handle while “Bernie Made-off” screws over some of the wealthiest people in the country is just too darn comical, right? Add some music and you’ve got yourself an uproarious production by Chris Voltaire: Octomom! The Musical. Even the title is titillating.

Hosted by the Fake Gallery, one of the most interesting spaces I’ve ever seen a play performed, the production lasted only an hour, enough time to get the crowd, including myself, roaring at the absurdity of today’s society. The space: a huge gallery, the walls covered in eye-opening, brightly-colored paintings from floor to ceiling on both the first and second floors. In the middle of the art and spectacle a stage was erected for silliness, sarcasm and…big boobies, I mean, babies.

Starting from October 2007 and going all the way through today, from Bernie Made-off’s (played by John Combs) ability to swindle and steal, to OctoMom’s (played by Molly McCook) birth of eight children that she uses to gain American Idol status, the parody was engaging, fun and fantastic. With only a stage and sparse lighting the eight-member cast, all with a spectacular set of pipes, sang their way through two years of idiocracy. While the play took serious liberties with facts, turning it into “fiction”, the fact remains that some of this stuff really happened. A woman really did give birth to eight kids, knowing (well, we think knowing) that she really couldn’t support them, given she already had a brood of six back home. And Berie Madoff with his ever so “ingenious” ponzi scheme stole millions of dollars and screwed over lots of so-called, smart, wealthy people. Bet they’re feeling smart now.

Other notable mentions are of course the play’s creator Chris Voltaire who could direct, write, then sing and act with the rest of them – he brought a few tears of laughter to my eyes. Dinora Walcott, in my opinion, was one of the best singers around. She played “reality”, and she sang a song with a wonderful hip hop/pop feel that ran throughout the play. Finally, I want to note that Blake Hogue was not only multi-faceted in this play (he played something like five characters in less than hour) but was adorable and added the most humor, in my humble opinion, to the already riotous show.

The scenes lasted no longer than five minutes (the perfect length) and contained songs that were rhythmic and melodically enjoyable, with lyrics that were witty, kitschy, at times childish and stupid, but always entertaining. In all honesty I was pleased to hear that the play was only an hour… how long can you really joke about a woman giving birth to eight kids?

Sold out every night that it has been showing, the play is a success – not because it’s clever, simplistic and entertaining (though obviously it is all those things) but because it speaks some underlying truth about human nature and Americans. We are kind of lame, we do want things to distract us from our sorrowful state, and we’ll look to just about anyone, including a dumb woman with bad plastic surgery who thought kids were the answer to her sad state, to make our lives seems just a little better.

Octomom! The Musical
Saturdays 8 and 10pm @ Fake Gallery
Extended through the end of August
$19.99 in advance; $29.99 at the door

» Octomom! The Mu$ical (official site)
» Fake Gallery

I’m staring at my HDTV. He looks sexier than I do, but I know better: He’s had work done and one of his component inputs is fried (Y,Pr,Pb? I think it’s Pb. Also, who cares.)

Still and all, he is my television at the end of the day. He’s going to interview me now, briefly. Stay with me.

WH#########T Hello Who’s There.

Yes. Hello Television.

What is this dreck. Why are you recommending The LA Opera’s production of Don Giovanni to the reader? Are you even going to go see it?

I’m all about the music theatre. Not the lavish Andrew Lloyd Webber productions mind you, can’t stomach that bullshit. Pull my fucking hair out. But if something contains music I’d enjoy, I’d see it in a heartbeat. I bought tickets to Porgy and Bess at Dorothy Chandler this year and actually didn’t get the chance to see it. Found out I was going to be out of town so I offered the tickets to a friend. Look at this shit, here’s my order right here. They sold me $20 tix, they were running some promotion. My seats look unbelieveably shitty:

YOUR ORDER
————————————————————–
The following item(s) will be First Class Mail
Performance Ticket – Porgy and Bess Fri, May 18, 2007 7:30PM

Seating Section: Rear Balcony B
Sub-Total $40.00
————————-

Shitty tickets, fine. Those tickets were never mailed and I had too much stuff going on at the time to stay on top of it, then at some point my friend tried to collect on the ticket offer. It was at this point I realized the date of the show had passed and my tickets were squandered, and could not be reimbursed. That pretty much sucked.

Cry me a river. You forgot to follow up prior to the performance. No sympathy for that.

I’m over it. I have seen a few other stage productions around town, though. Hell I saw Ray Charles Live! @ the Pasadena Playhouse just last weekend (wrote it for [redacted], became interested in the play afterward, purchased tickets, ultimately found it predictable and boring but the music was good)…some lesbian-themed something or other @ the Hudson on Santa Monica, starring a coworker… Dead End @ Ahmanson (somebody knew somebody designed the set or similar, still not sure how I ended up at that one)…those last two have no music technically….wait wait…John Lancie narrating Peter and the Wolf to live orchestra for an auditorium full of spellbound children one Saturday morning at Dorothy Chandler, this was a volunteer gig years ago, the head ballerina’s top slipped down and every child in the house got an eyeful of nipple. Like ten minutes of pure bare nipples, real topless children’s ballet. Believe it!

Yawn.

I saw The Black Rider, Ahmanson, May 2006. That should sure as hell count. I enjoyed that one. Went with Carolyn Kellogg, editor for LAist.com at the time. I sent Jeannette to review the play for our site the same night (opening night? could be, I forget)…Jeannette bitched that her tickets didn’t include admission to the afterparty but she didn’t miss much. Outcome. Carolyn played it safe – probably wise – and served up a straightforward review; I thought Jeannette’s was funnier. Whatever, I dug the performance we’re not critiquing reviews here.

I saw that play, The Black Rider.

Oh the hell you did. Fuck off.

But I did. I did not care for the “Pegleg” character so much, but the acting was superb.

End point, I’d go see Don Giovanni this Friday. Look at that photo up top. I can’t stop giggling. That guy + Mozart = No-Brainer.

Why are you recommending the reader see Don Caballero? Have you ever even seen Don Caballero?

Take it easy already, it was a cheap double play built shakily from two DON announcements in today’s inbox. But I recommend both shows, whatever that’s worth.

So you have seen Don Caballero, as compared to Don Giovanni?

I saw Don Caballero at Oak Canyon Ranch, Irvine, July 2000. Heat of the afternoon. Goldenvoice setup. This ain’t no picnic, year two, lineup included Beck, Blue Man Group, Sam Prekop, Modest Mouse, At The Drive In, Yo La Tengo etc etc. (Any readers go to this show? Hell no you’re too young) Not a bad first festival I got us into, having just moved out here from Texas. I’ll never forget this moment at that festival. They had two stages right next to each other to insure smooth transitions between bands. Basically you had a seamless full day of music as compared to stage-hopping. Perfect setup. So here’s Don Caballero trio going positively apeshit on one stage. Ridiculous math rock, the loops are out of this world. I’m digging it, I’m into the mad energy, the noises, the loops. Looping guitar out of fucking control. Hulk of a drummer sweating balls off. If memory serves, possibly playing in his boxers. Seems right. Anyhow their time is up but the jam IS NOT FINISHED, dig? Grandaddy’s on the stage to the right. The fucking monitor speakers are kept on for the band but the crowd PA slowly fades into Grandaddy – no bullshit. Caballero’s time was up and that was that, everybody’s getting Grandaddy in the PA speakers, grandaddy this grandaddy that but I’ve seen Grandaddy the year prior at SXSW, see. I like ‘em but I want to hang with the new guys, totally into this nutjob Don Caballero show. The crowd shifts but a few dozen fools, self included, stick around near the first stage. They keep jamming although you can’t hear a damn thing they’re playing at this point. Basically you sense the jam. They’re still flailing around. Few minutes into the first Grandaddy song they finish and the hangers-on at stage 1 clap for the set and wail all crazy for their new heroes, Don Fucking Caballero. Now we’re done, bitches. Now we’re done. Anyhow it left a mark on me in some fashion as you can tell. I bought a cd the next week. ‘Course Ian Williams is in Battles now, so the lineup has changed, they may have four members at this point. I think they even disbanded for a while. Still, for one afternoon – tough to pull off particularly in an outdoor setting – they managed to out-rock neighboring PA-enabled Grandaddy, regardless of what this archaic molding NME article says to the contrary. At The Drive In, on the other hand…that was an entirely different story. NME didn’t fully do them justice either, that shit was kind of out of control.

So you recommend both shows then. Don Caballero is playing in Long Beach…

Go to Long Beach, what the hell! Spend the day there. When the day is done, you’re in Long Beach, go to the show. What do you want from me. Done. Take off for San Pedro at lunch. Flex Friday. Solid plan. Come 11pm you’ll be jamming with every unattached, sweating male fan of instrumental math rock within a 30-mile radius. Wear something torn and black.

(Silence)

I recommend both shows. Hell, you can actually go to both. DC is playing Safari Sam’s this Wednesday, I added it to the damn calendar today. Then go to DG friday – or any of the other two dozen dates it’s playing between now and December 15. Done. Solved. Next?

You’re going to end up with me Friday, end of night of course. My guess.

Well. We’ll see.

For the love of the ever living g*d, why the fuck does every damn theater in Los Angeles County insist on calling its space a theatRE?! We’re not in the UK! We don’t use cheques, the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced “zee” not “zed,” and cricket is a cousin of the locust, not a game.

I mean, really.

A can of pickled herring from the private stock of Dan the LA City Bureaucrat to the best answer to this question. Post your answer in the comments section. And no whining. My decision is final, dammit. It’s my smelly fish, and I’ll give it to whom I please.

I grew up in a part of San Diego called Rancho Penasquitos, which is Spanish for “Rancho Penasquitos.” The main shopping area, which came complete with a Jack In the Box AND a El Pollo Loco, was known as the Penasquitos Towne Centre. This irritated me, and not only due to the dearth of dining options, but because a friggin’ strip mall does not bring to mind Jolly ‘Ole England. It calls to mind Jolly ‘Ole Topeka, hardly the place I want swimming to mind when thinking upon the halcyon days of my youth.

But, anyhow…

“Betrayal” is an excellent play. You should go see it. It has two things I love: a plot (weirdly missing from a lot of current shows) and a twisted time frame. That is, the tale is told backwards, opening at the point where an affair between Emma (Christine Stump/Robin Roy) and Jerry (J. Richey Nash), the heart of the plot, ends.

And then Emma’s husband Robert (Christopher Cappiello) shows up, revving up the play’s engine and motoring it backwards to its beginning. It’s like a stop-motion film of flowers blooming, whithering and dying, only in reverse. It’s all the more wrenching, looking at that reformed whole, as we all know Emma and Jerry’s love is doomed.

The play has a staccato feel, the lines coming at you fast, deftly transversing the tragic and farcical scenes, and keeping the whole sordid business from collapsing under its own weight. But it slows down too, abruptly switching gears into a series of pregnant (and ultimately stillborn) pauses, making the audience squirm a bit. Emotion! It’s what’s for dinner.

The Attic Theatre & Film Center
5429 W. Washington Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
Playing until May 12, each Thursday through Saturday @ 8 p.m.
Tickets, $20

Photo by James Carey

I was given the task of seeing The Joffrey Ballet through modern eyes. And I’m not going to lie, I intended to bag on it no matter how good it was, because I don’t usually go in for ballet.

But some IDIOT at the LA Times did that for me.

So let me come to Joffrey’s defense.

“Les Presages” was their first act, and to be honest, typical of a ballet about society and villainy and all that. Nice costumes and dancing, but for my money, they could have been ice skating — I wasn’t too interested. I was, however, interested in John Gluckman, a very limber and theatrical talent who played Aquaman’s Evil Brother. (I don’t know who he was supposed to be.) He ate up the floor with unpredictable karate kicking elegance and expert timing. And my girlfriend said he had a nice body.

So let’s talk about the Balanchine/Stravinsky “Apollo.” “Apollo” was spare, but this was purposeful staging. It was George Balanchine’s methodology and Stravinsky’s music at their most minimalist, and even I didn’t miss the reason for that. One platform center stage, all the gods and muses in white, small toy icons representing the various disciplines, and that weird feeling of dark water and god being dead intermixed with a little sizzle from the muses: it focused the audience on the performers and not the costumes or whatever passed for a plot. That is not to say it was a Cirque Du Soleil with feats of strength, grace under pressure, pathos and pirouettes… I was thinking it was more like a live-action FANTASIA. But it transcends even that. What this “Apollo” performance does is make you and your audience neighbors feel the same sensation of joy simultaneously. The actors curl up in fetal positions and suddenly spring up like Samurai Jack. They merge into humanoid Shiva shapes of legs and arms. Outstanding to track — set your mind on tracking one dancer and see.

How can this madman at the Times claim Calvin Kitten (Apollo) was miscast? Here was an extraordinarily funny and contemporary young dancer who knows how to make an effete art form break the fourth goddamn fucking wall. Yes, we laughed when Apollo was born. Mr. Kitten took a beloved half-second to pantomime his birth pang like Charlie Brown tumbling from one of Lucy’s bitch slaps. But for the love of crumb cake, 30% of the audience grew up on South Park, not the motherfucking Nutcracker. Most of the time, ballet is trying to put itself on the most inaccessible shelf in the supermarket of art. Mr. Kitten properly stocks this lofty ideal next to the Meow Mix. Pompous ass over at the Times calls it a vacuous grimore of besmirched synonyms for ignoble. Okay, whatever.

So the third act was Kurt Jooss’ “The Green Table”, a costumed ballet that looks like a Black Sabbath video. It begins with ten well-dressed evil Plutocrats wearing pig masks, ostensibly planning a war around a green table to reap the benefits of doing so. At one moment they fire pop guns to freak out the audience. Fabrice Calmels personifies Death as a bloodthirsty Aztec god who lurks in the shadows like Lou Ferrigno. Bare-naked ladies and soldiers and babushka-wearing prostitutes faint and tumble in a mime of war and holocaust that looks like a 1940s animated Disney classic of the “Goodbye Blue Sky” sequence from PINK FLOYD THE WALL. Incidentally, a sort of Charlie Chaplain “Profiteer” character keeps doing some sprightly clean-up operation at the end of scenes that is supposed to be important and meaningful. I don’t know what the fuck he was doing. But that’s how he rolls. Can anyone tell me what he represents?

I recommend that you check out the Joffrey Ballet. I was entertained and surprised by the repertoire, especially “Apollo”, which will change your life. Enjoy Joffrey for who they are, don’t be afraid to see a ballet if you’ve never seen one, don’t be a total fucking douche bag about whether the Balanchine properly anthropomorphizes the angst of the proletariat, and you will be ensorcelled.

My name is MFV, and I authenticate this material with my seal.

But then, as I watched a dramatic representation of the dying thoughts of a freshly beheaded obscure 19th Century Chinese woman, I figured it out: I just didn’t get it.

Sure, I get that Severance is made of vignettes, 30 mini-dramas of people (and one chicken) who suffer the misfortunate of leaving this earth in multiple pieces. I get that the play is supposed to be abstract, over-the-top and unsettling. And I even get that each piece is supposed to be 90 seconds long, the length of time the writer and director (Robert Olen Butler and David Jette, respectively) believe a decapitated head remains conscious.

(There is a fair amount of disagreement on this point. Some believe it is really only six to eight seconds. Others believe a half-minute, while still others believe the shock of losing ones body to the neck causes instantaneous death. Not surprisingly, there’s not a lot of current research on the topic, so the answer may never be known.)

But after all that getting and understanding, my brain still picks up nothing but white noise.

There seems to be no continuity, no larger point the play is attempting to make. The show tells the tales of those murdered, executed, killed in battle (or for dinner) as well as those who suffered horrific accidents. Some vignettes are of real people, others of mythical persons and beasts. Why, damnit?

The playbill includes, at the back, an exhortation to abolish the death penalty. This almost makes sense, until a closer inspection reveals the plea is, in fact, a paid advertisement.

Still, most of the vignettes, taken on their own, are very enjoyable, staged well and professionally–and in some instances, brilliantly–acted. The bits involving a Mississippi woman murdered in 2003, a court jester killed for a bad joke in the 15th century and an extraordinarily creepy portrayal of Nicole Brown Simpson are particularly memorable.

Severance
McCadden Place Theatre
1157 N. McCadden Place
Hollywood

Through March 31
Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 pm; Sundays, 2 pm

Tickets and Info

And it’s perfect.

“In Arabia We’d All Be Kings” is set in Hell’s Kitchen, a part of Manhattan noted for its honesty in advertising. Or, so it used to be. During the late 1990s, the ‘Kitchen closed, slowly morphing into hipster land, sporting high-end restaurants and no-name bars similar to the ones three blocks north of the Elephant.

The play itself takes place in a bar, and the characters themselves are like moving pieces of the beautifully designed set. They serve as archetypes of the neighborhood that was: the parolee, the whore, the druggie, the old drunk, a sycophantic bartender, opportunistic investors and a teenager with a hair-trigger.

The plot is loose, roughly revolving an imminent sale of the bar and its affect on the characters. Though clearly about gentrification, the play raises questions it does not intend to answer. Does the closing of the bar makes the characters lives better or worse? Is Hell’s Kitchen worth saving?

The plot, such that it is, clearly takes a back seat to the portraits of the characters, presented as a series of well-told vignettes. This is where the play shines. The acting and directing are fluid, the characters vibrant and real. During one particularly poignant part of the play, a woman behind me broke out into loud sobs. I had a lump in my throat myself.

In Arabia We’d All Be Kings
Elephant Theatre
6322 Santa Monica Blvd.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday 8 p.m., through March 17
Tickets and information

Where the hell is the Brentwood Theatre? (And where do they get off with the snotty British spelling of “theater” anyhow?) Allegedly at the corner of Wilshire and San Vincente, the theater is more accurately at the corner of Random Building and Raised Parking Lot in the far west corner of the Westside VA complex.

Once found – via the usual incantation of curse words coupled with random wandering – the venue underwhelms. It has the feel of a pricey private school theater (think Harvard Westlake), which is, well, perfect, since the one-nun show is set in a parochial classroom.

As in the other two Sister’s Catechism plays, we, the audience, are the students. The lights are left on – quite disquieting to a generation that prefers its entertainment in darkened rooms – and immodest dress and poor posture is frowned upon.

Though it drags toward the end, the show is funny, weirdly educational, and, in a word, brilliant. It also is the first show I’ve seen commencing with The Star-Spangled Banner sung by a homeless group.

Scolding latecomers, praising the largely Jewish audience for their knowledge of obscure Catholic saints, and doling out Vatican II wisdom with a side of sharp wit, Maripat Donovan (Sister) almost makes you want to go to church again. Well, almost.

Sister’s Christmas Catechism
By Maripat Donovan
Brentwood Theatre
Dec. 5 – 17
Tickets: $40 [ buy now ]
Runtime: approx. two hours

(Sam Shepard, interestingly enough, shares a similar name with Dr. Sam Sheppard, the doctor accused of bludgeoning his pregnant wife to death. That is, the plot line behind “The Fugitive.” Dr. Sheppard died in 1970, while the playwright Shepard still draws oxygen.)

The play is alternately subtle and aggressive, always demanding your attention. Many of the plot lines are ambiguous, but seem to be purposefully so. The acting is riveting, and production quality is top notch. The main feature of the set — a cutout of a prone figure — draws your eyes and sets the tone of the piece.

This rarely performed play has the feel of a riff, a series of notes put together, almost at random, that pull together to create its whole. It is a trick to give this piece the discombobulated overtones it requires without driving its audience nuts. Fortunately, the actors and director were clearly up to the task, and it works. It confounds, but not to the point of distraction, and gives you the tools to make up your own mind.

Suicide in Bb by Sam Shepard
Playing Thursday, Friday & Saturday @ 8 p.m.
October 20th – November 16th
The Hayworth Theater
2511 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90057

Tickets: Plays411 or 323-960-7740