STAGE REVIEW : RAW SLICE OF LIFE? ‘WHITE BREAD’ IS IT

“White Bread” is a family drama that breathes despite a shambles of a structure that suggests a broken-down bicycle--the spokes and handlebars and frame are all over the family garage.

Playwright Glenn Hopkins and a cast reeking of urban and familial plight bring a rawness to this kitchen-sink material that catches you with its alternating energy. That’s because enough of the writing and acting is sufficiently abrasive to echo family life in the last three decades. The people here are more curiously real than their real-life popularized counterparts, the Santa Barbara Loud family of the ‘60s, immortalized in that verite series of TV documentaries.

The difference in this corrosive two-act play is that Hopkins, who also directs and produces, is not writing from a ‘60s liberal viewpoint. Some of these characters really stink up the joint. The cocaine habit of the central youth, strongly conveyed by an actor (Brent Pfaff) who manages to effectively overcome his beach blanket/GQ looks, is the play’s chief dramatic device. And the non-exploitive but true-to-the-bone dramatization of one nice guy’s habit is quietly moving enough to warrant this play a pitch in the literature of drug-abuse clinics.

Ultimately, though, the play is not about drugs but a value system that destroys families. Among the nine-family characters, the four brothers are the anchor of this domestic pit.

Performances at 1157 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood, 8:30 p.m., Saturday, and 3 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, through Aug. 17 (213) 462-9070.