STAGE REVIEW : ONE-ACTS ON ‘WOMEN’S FANTASIES’

Erica Jong’s first and best-selling novel, “Fear of Flying,” opened with a sexual fantasy set in a train. It was ribald, imaginative, refined and on target. Give or take a few particulars, it illuminated a universal flight of female fantasy.

“Women’s Sexual Fantasies,” the Women-in-Theatre collection of seven new playlets on the subject, goes after the same thing at the Cast Theatre, but with a much less vigorous imagination.

The mixed results could not have been a secret to Women-in-Theatre artistic director Mary Burkin, who wisely arranged the one-acts in a progressive order of interest: the least compelling piece at the start (“Soft Soap”), the funniest and most identifiable one at the end (“Blind Date”).

In the middle lies a grab bag. The best written and most intriguing of the one-acts is Leslie E. Spencer’s sophisticated “All About Adam,” as seen by the women in Adam’s life (Susan Michael, Corky Ormine, Melba Englander, Rhonda Lord), which, it turns out, hasn’t much to do with how Adam (an excellent Stephen Christopher) sees them. Well directed by Shawn Nelson, Spencer’s play is the only one in the lot that attempts an investigation of the complex fantasy aspects of reality.

The rest of the plays are more like “Trudy and Elaine.” Former best friends with a new difference, Trudy, it seems, is a “waist down” person and Elaine a “waist up” one. Or is it the other way around? They drown their disagreements in a mutual passion for the taste of chocolate. You have to scratch a bit to find the sexual fantasy here, but let it pass. Writer-director Karin Spritzler doesn’t make it worth the effort, despite lively performances from Cinda Jackson as Elaine and Lisa Chess as Trudy.

Even though “Soft Soap,” written and directed by Andersen Van Hoy, is the most cliche of the pieces, it is not the most self-indulgent. Loaded with uninspired lines, “Soap” also gives us a tired situation: a playwright writing for TV to pay the rent (Dorene Ludwig), who lets her mind stray to her sexual fantasy (the handsome Mark Aaron) and is rescued--another figment, of course--by her dotty fairy godmother (Jacque Lynn Colton). This is not “Cinderella” and Van Hoy has yet to find an ending for her piece, though on balance, considering its many weaknesses, it may be better merely to start over.

The prize for self-indulgence goes handily to Maureen Murphy’s “For Academic Investigation Only,” a play that doesn’t hear itself speak. It begins with a stupefying admonishment from the class professor, uneasily played by Englander, calling for the “ladies, ladies” to “come to order” and goes into a vapid demonstration of a sexual fantasy overdescribed as the “depths of erotic fantasy where no man will venture and few women.” In the first place, who says? In the second, who cares? The piece, directed by Joanne Casey, simply doesn’t command further examination.

At least Lyla Graham’s “The Goddess of Minsk” has a sense of humor. It takes the slenderest of situations--two slightly more-than-middle-aged American women traveling in the Soviet Union (Yvonne Brenner, Dinah Anne Rogers) who are accosted by two Russian men (Nicholas Howard Andreola, Allan Kolman)--and turns it into a close encounter of the flattering kind.

There is nothing too threatening here, under Audrey Marlyn Singer’s direction, but it does offer something tender, funny and just unreal for two such timid travelers.

Another, closer encounter of the middle-aged kind is provided in the Sunja Svensen monologue, “Fantasy of a Middle-Aged Woman,” less a sexual than a philosophical reflection between a woman and her mirror on growing up (and older) as the body grows down (and begins to fall apart).

Directed by Michael Keusch and edgily performed by the author, it is a fragile discourse with self and audience, just brief enough not to overstay its welcome.

Finally, Dorene Ludwig, who does a creditable job of playing the not-so-well-written writer in “Soft Soap,” proves that in real life she is a creditable writer herself. “Blind Date” is her own piece (which she also directs), the mini-saga of a young woman who, burned out on a series of blind encounters engineered by a well-meaning friend, decides to give the process one more chance. The results are good fun--the best entertainment in an evening of otherwise humdrum theater.

“Women’s Sexual Fantasies” is further defined as “WIT in Fantasyland, the Fourth Annual Festival of New Plays,” which doesn’t say very much for the creative imagination of most of the women involved. As a collection, these plays suggest that the writers still have some way to go before they truly take off into fantasyland and can command serious, let alone fantastical, attention. But it is a beginning, and at least two of these writers--Ludwig and Spencer--give every indication that they should continue to flap their wings.

Performances at 804 N. El Centro Ave. in Hollywood run Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. until Oct. 12; (213) 462-0265.