‘BRIDEGROOM’ HAS TRACES OF WELTY

The Natchez Trace, setting of Alfred Uhry’s and Robert Waldman’s square-dancing, bluegrass musical, “The Robber Bridegroom,” was a real place in the early days of the Louisiana Purchase. It was a kind of thoroughfare in the mid-South for every settler who could get that far, an early Wild West where your survival just might have depended upon how tall you told your tale.

But watching Todd Nielsen’s production at the Colony Studio Theatre, I kept thinking of Disney’s Frontierland, the style of turning savage history into a cute cartoon. Whether it is Gary Cearlock’s ultra-handsome Robber or a woodsy set by Nielsen that is just too well-scrubbed, everything here seems calculated to look good, whether or not that makes sense.

Based on the novella by Eudora Welty, whose work is always sharp, true but never cute, Uhry’s book and lyrics play at the old trick of lovers (Cearlock and Carlton Miller’s Rosamund) confusing identities. On one hand, Jamie the Robber is a confident highwayman, and yet he so graciously rescues Rosamund’s father (Don Woodruff) from rival thieves that the father sees in him his future son-in-law. Rosamund’s smitten with Jamie in a forest encounter, but not Jamie as suitor. She doesn’t know he’s one and the same.

In and around this are myriad plot complications, square-dancing, Waldman’s sometimes awkward and repetitive score, and general inattention to the authentic gritty feel of the period. Judith Heinz rises above this with a wickedly comic portrayal of Rosamund’s nasty stepmother, followed by Nick DeGruccio, who is goonishly delightful as Goat.

Marchele Copple’s costumes seem more at home on the Natchez Trace than the set, but for all the attention to surfaces, the music is taped--draining this show of real potential presence.

Performances at 1944 Riverside Drive, run Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m., until May 4, (213) 665-3011.

‘ANTIMIME ALLEGORICALS’

Kline (that’s his full stage name) is a tall Teutonic-looking fellow with a bald head, inside of which are some clearly troubled dreams.

Some of them barely come to the surface in his one-man work, “Antimime Allegoricals,” at the Wallenboyd. When they do, as in one of his “Animal Stories” called “Porpoise of Life,” he appears ready to explode with manic visions, nearly becoming the porpoise singing to us in the water. More often though, Kline falls into most of the traps that can trip up a performer who needs a director.

He seems to be in love with the sound of his own voice, and he hasn’t developed a voice as storyteller or the performer’s instinct to know when enough’s enough. His characters, if you can call them that, eerily convey that feeling of being overwhelmed by dread, but by the time Kline is spinning the story of an actor’s life in the show’s final piece, “The Holy Grail,” we have tired of it--dread and all.

“Antimime” plays at 301 Boyd St. tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m. only, (213) 629-2205.

‘SOLLY’S FOLLIES’

That staple of Milt Larsen’s Variety Arts Center, the musical revue, is back in the form of “Solly’s Follies,” a light, sometimes snappy collection of tunes by composer/lyricist Bill Solly.

Fans of his “Great American Backstage Musical” know Solly as a solid player in the lyric major leagues, spinning and weaving more puns and rhymes than the ear can often snatch.

But the problems with that show are fairly evident here. Solly seems to know only two moods, musically: kicky razzmatazz, as in “You’re an Idiot, Eliot” and “I Got What? (The Bug)”--or pure sentimental schmaltz like “Does Anybody Love You?” This revue becomes a mechanical operation after a while, too carefully alternating upbeat with down.

Solly joins the ensemble of Scott Allyn, Cynthia Gray, Marsha Kramer, Katherine Lench and David Ruprecht for the “Follies,” and whether you’re taken with them is strictly a matter of taste.

Their professionalism and well-rehearsed grace undeniably complement the tunes. Yet individual personalities never rise to the fore, leaving a hollowness at the show’s center.

Performances at 940 S. Figueroa St., are Wednesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m., Saturdays, 8 and 10 p.m., until April 19, (213) 488-1456.

‘UNCLE VANYA’

Lonny Chapman’s production at Group Repertory Theatre of “In Search of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya” is a concept play without a concept.

In a manner that would make Julian Beck turn over in his grave, the cast slowly assembles on stage for the final dress, pre-tech rehearsal of “Uncle Vanya,” with the director (Susan Brabeau) taking them through the paces.

She lets the audience in on the game: We’ll be watching “Vanya” from the actor’s standpoint, we’re told, and maybe we’ll understand Chekhov in relation to our own times a bit better. Maybe, if we saw actors really working at their characters, a director really challenging the actors in their work, and both searching for something fresh.

Nothing of the sort occurs. Brabeau gives her cast a few pointers on how to spice this or that moment, and then runs off. But with the kind of lead-foot performances that fill this staging, she should be demanding more run-throughs, to say nothing of more rehearsal time.

One could safely lay odds that several local junior college troupes, tackling the same play, have far surpassed what Chapman and company manage here. John Petlock can’t elicit Vanya’s inner identity crisis, Steve Dougherty’s Astrov sounds like a taxi driver, and Kasey Walker’s floundering Elena is remarkably boring. By contrast, Patricia Alice Albrecht’s passionate Sonya seems to have walked in from another production. Moral: If you want to do a concept, make sure you know what you’re conceptualizing about.

Performances at 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood, are Fridays through Sundays, 8 p.m. until April 26, (818) 769-PLAY.