‘DREAD’

Don’t let the title fool you; “Dread” will have you in stitches. John Medici’s one-man recollection of growing up Italian in New York, subtitled “the journey of an Italian-American Renaissance prince from East Harlem to the Borscht Belt and beyond,” is a sort of existential “After Hours,” a comic quest for self-meaning that pays off in two acts of cathartic laughter.

The venue for Medici’s recitation of woes is, appropriately enough, Theatre East, a workshop space above Jerry’s Deli in Studio City. There’s no real set to speak of, just Medici alone on a platform in a three-piece suit while J. Kent Inasy’s lighting colors his recollections in a witty, irreverent theme of red, white and blue.

Not much, you might think, to hold one’s interest very long. But Medici’s remembrance of things past is not only involving, it practically leaves you begging for more. Credit here must go not only to Medici but also director Jack Colvin, who imparts to the monologue the sense of a one-on-one conversation with every member of the audience.

Medici himself makes an energetic, just-short-of-manic narrator, and his writing is peppered with trenchant, nothing’s-sacred social observations, among them a description of altar boys as “the worker bees of Mother Church.” About the man himself, a program bio notes only that “the Harlem River spawned him but the Pacific Coast now claims his allegiance.” And lucky for us, too.

Performances at 12655 Ventura Blvd. run Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m., through Feb. 23; (818) 760-4160.