STAGE REVIEWS : ‘THE BLUE HOUR’

Fans of Pulitzer-winning David Mamet might want to check out two curios from Mamet’s cabaret/curtain-raising/experimental forays. In a refreshing break from time-worn early evening curtains, these two one-acts get under way late night (11 p.m.) under the Camelot Artists banner at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

“The Blue Hour: City Sketches,” first performed as a workshop at New York’s Public Theater in 1979, is pretty self-descriptive, a quintet of urban encounters, alternately featuring 10 actors and all marked by Angst , anger or melancholy.

The second one-act, “All Men Are Whores” (1977), is much less accessible and marked by several verbal excursions into sexual dimensions, subtle and otherwise. The trio of actors (Jan Munroe, Philip Coccioletti and Susan Falcon) drift in shadow, often interlocking in mannered formations.

The dominant tone is brooding: costumes are all identically black and lighting is copperish. Dale Howard directs with a clear viewpoint. Performances at 254 S. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills, at 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; (213) 466-1769. Runs indefinitely.