‘STUDS SCHWARTZ’ FROM SKID ROW, L.A.

Subtitled “America’s First Homeless Ensemble,” a theatrical company calling itself the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is premiering a play about the down and out on Skid Row. “No Stone for Studs Schwartz,” a Pipeline presentation at the Boyd Street Theater in downtown L.A.’s warehouse district, is maddening if you care about clarity, craftsmanship, diction, logic and artifice. If you can overlook such measures, the experience, oddly enough, is still maddening because the production asks too much of your indulgence.

It’s as if a theater of the deaf or the blind were allowed to get away with artless mayhem because they had you by the heart. “Studs Schwartz” without its poverty therapy would be impossible to take. But that social therapy, dramatized through the odyssey of a Skid-Row murder victim and centered on the hope, humor and self-respect of the dispossessed, is muddied and self-conscious.

The actors playing the 13 characters slip in and out of their real selves, but the “real people” are mere curiosities. Exceptions are the engaging title character with a down-home, raspy delivery (played by William Aaron “Jim” Beame) and his alter ego (John Malpede, in a feverish, arm-flailing performance that’s quite funny).

Malpede, who co-directed with Bill Kerr, unfortunately has a fetish for overlapping dialogue. Worse, guffawing cacklers in the audience frequently drowned out the rest of the words.

There’s no reason the homeless can’t put on theater--they’ve been doing it for centuries. But those who must sleep outdoors deserve better than this. (Writing credit is given to the whole troupe.)

Performances at 301 Boyd St., Los Angeles, run Fridays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., until Feb. 7, (213) 629-2205.

‘THE LEFT FIELDERS’

Celebrating its third anniversary, this comedy-improv group, in a show billed “The Return of the Left Fielders,” enjoys the salient earmarks of the genre: The performers are mercurial, sly, talented actors, rather endearing and physically disciplined.

The raked seating at the Whitefire Theater in Sherman Oaks offers good sightlines, director-performer Wade Sheeler is adept at quick 20- to 30-second sketches, a sense of mime underscores the production and the Levi’s/sweat shirt costume decor is apt.

Satiric targets range from crowded restaurants (a couple forced to dine in the men’s urinal) to roller-skating carhops to telephone therapy to Jehovah’s Witnesses turned into film lore’s body snatchers. The material is not great but this improv troupe embosses what it touches. An on-stage guitarist and deft lighting enhance the aural and visual line of the show.

Of the nine-member troupe, Wes Hanson and James Cleveland are masks of facial mobility.

Performances at 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, run Fridays through Saturdays, 10 p.m., until Feb. 28, (818) 994-8300.

‘THE LLOYD ADAMS CHRONICLES’

There may be a post open for a dramaturge at the new Alliance Repertory Company in Burbank. The company’s debut selection is hapless.

“The Lloyd Adams Chronicles,” which deals with a successful novelist’s failed love life, suggests playwright T. J. Walsh’s autobiographical roman a clef. It’s a repetitive, rudderless comedic relationship saga burdened with the added misfortune of tacky production values.

Costumes and lighting are devoid of any imagination; props, such as a Snoopy dog, sit in the same place for the play’s two-year time span; incidental music sounds like banal chords from a TV episodic track and scene changes are negotiated in shadow by a nervous scene dresser who only seems to be moving ash trays.

Ultimately, the production, directed by Michael Holden (who turns in the show’s most vivid acting performance as a brash sportswriter), encourages a certain empathy for the actors playing the protagonist (Alan McRae) and the three women in his whiny life (Kajon Cermak, Diane Davisson, Georgia Bragg).

The playwright does have something to say about the nature of human commitment and some of his lines are indeed funny (“go to bed with an actress and there’s no telling who you’ll wake up with”). But you know that when a guy awakened from a hangover unfurls smart one-liners, you’re in for in evening of it.

Given the play’s lack of momentum, its seat-of-the-pants direction and mechanical structure, the performers are surprisingly fine.

Performances at 226 N. Golden Mall, Burbank, run Fridays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m., indefinitely, (818) 845-4640.

‘THE ROAD SHOW’

Normally, “The Road Show” re-creates moments from U.S. history in schools and galleries under the umbrella of the American Living History Theater. But artistic director Mary Burkin, seeking a change of pace, wanted to stage some parodies of Shakespeare for the Renaissance Faire. What she came up with is the blessedly less-than-an-hour-long program at Deja Vu Coffeehouse.

Lampooning Shakespeare is not this group’s strong suit. The targets are “Antony and Cleopatra” and “Romeo and Juliet.” Conceptually, some of the satire is clever: Romeo carrying a teddy bear and Cleopatra talking with a Bronx accent. But the execution, under John Serembe’s direction, is too noisy, substituting bluster for style.

Performances at 1705 N. Kenmore Ave., Hollywood, run Tuesdays through Wednesdays, 8 p.m., until Jan. 28, (213) 666-0434.