STAGE REVIEW : DEBUT OF ‘ON THE RAZZLE’: WHERE IS THE DAZZLE?

It’s a pity that Tom Stoppard’s “On the Razzle” isn’t getting a better Los Angeles debut than the one offered by the West Coast Ensemble, normally a skilled troupe but which is out of its stylistic depth with this.

“On the Razzle” is Stoppard’s adaptation of Johann Nestroy’s “Einen Jux Wille Er Sich Machen,” which in turn was adapted in 1842 from a seven-year-old farce by John Oxenford called “A Day Well Spent.” To the standard farcical devices of punctured hubris, mistaken identities and the attempt of a pair of young lovers to outwit a stern patriarch, Stoppard has added his characteristic play with the English language, as though an old engine were hauled out for some snappy polishing. Double-entendre and the odd locution make the occasion here, so much so that you can almost visualize Stoppard cackling the night away in his study, tooling in lines like “Why does the constable have my Melchior by the geraniums?” and “I’ve come from your relatively departed aunt; I’m afraid she’s as mortified as a doornail.” And isn’t it the most natural thing in the world for an emperor, on a good day, to feel empirical?

Richard D. Smart’s set and costume design are superior (by now someone will have surely nailed down that willfully unbalanced restaurant coat rack), as is Leonora Schildkraut’s sound (with the curious exception of her inclusion of bagpipe music into 19th-Century Austria). The cramped stage space at the Richmond Shepard is too small for a play that needs to stay light on its feet, though dancing is just what this production isn’t. Under Robert Lussier’s direction, most of the women play Continental period style and most of the men play American sitcom, and in that lurching jumble of styles, “Razzle” fizzles. A sure sign of a comedy in trouble is when people stand shouting at each other, as they tend to do here.

Performances Thursday through Sunday, 8 p.m., at 6468 Santa Monica Blvd. (851-3771) through March 31.

The less said about the TMTTA production of John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” at the Cast-at-the-Circle, the better. Director Forest Whitaker’s adaptation--a euphemism for hatchet job--resets Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy Porter in Los Angeles. He’s black and wan and riddled with self-pity, she’s white and blank; Helena treats the breakup of their marriage (which she’s hastened) and the end of her affair with Jimmy like a home-economics experiment gone awry, and Cliff suffers all these fools with bottomless macho cheer. “Look Back in Anger” serves well as an epitaph for the unwary visitor to this production.

Performances Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m. at 804 N. El Centro Ave. (462-0265) through March 24.