CONFRONTATION OF MUSIC, POLITICS

Those unlikely bedfellows, music and politics, come together in David Pownall’s “Master Class,” opening this weekend at the Odyssey. It’s a political/comical confrontation between Soviet composers Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich and Joseph Stalin and his minister of culture, Andrei Zhdanov.

“In 1948, the Russian government was encouraging artists into more conventional forms of expression,” explained Odyssey artistic director Ron Sossi, who’s staging the work. “They didn’t want avant-garde, experimental work, atonal, dissonant music, Picasso’s paintings. They wanted work that was conventional and realistic. It began an era of Soviet realism in the arts that continues today.

“The conference itself is fictitious. Actually, Prokofiev and Shostakovich--and (Aram) Khatchaturian--were censured by the musicians’ union for being too ‘formalist.’ But in this meeting, Stalin tries to pressure, cajole, charm the composers into buckling down, becoming good examples. Audiences may think that the arguments of the artist are going to be stronger than the arguments of politicians, but Stalin is quite eloquent. And it raises some questions: Should art be independent or should it have some social obligation--and to what extent?

“The arguments become philosophical, then personal,” Sossi added. “Over a couple of hours, as they get progressively drunker, they let their hair down, say things you wouldn’t expect. So the tone goes from serious, confrontational and sad at one moment, to wacky and silly the next. I think it’s got touches of Shaw and also ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’--that pressure-cooker quality.”

Also new--and intriguing--is Matt Williams’ “Bruce Lee Is Dead and I’m Not Feeling Too Good Either” (at the Zephyr), which is being described as a “comedy in four movements.” In fact, when director Susann Brinkley first approached playwright Williams (“Daylight to Boonville”) about working on a project together, the play in question was a pair of one-acts.

The overlapping protagonist is James Rupert Carter III, “a homeless man who just happens to be amazingly charming and very funny,” explained Brinkley. “It traces his normal day, the people he meets, the situations he runs into. People who’ve lived in New York will immediately recognize the nun who collects funds at Port Authority. He’s lifted these landmarks, found these people in Times Square--and given them names.

“It doesn’t really deal with the issue of being homeless,” she added. “It deals with hope--and Jason has that. So it’s not heavy. When we first started talking, our fear was that we were ignoring the issue. We’re not. But this is just entertainment, just a play.” And the title? “Jason’s role model is Bruce Lee--he’s sure that he’s still alive. The point is ‘No, he’s not. The truth is that the world is hard; you make it as soft as you can.’ ”

“I wanted to see what it was like, whether I’d be comfortable doing this kind of play here,” said David Kaplan, who’s putting on his classical hat, staging Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” at the Ensemble Studio Theatre. “What I’m known for in Los Angeles is a play with giant light bulbs (‘Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights,’ 1986) and one with a giant mermaid (‘The Circus of Dr. Lao,’ 1985.) I wanted to work with something more subtle.

“That’s the kind of direction this is--and I like it. But it is a risk, probably the biggest I’ve taken. People may see it and say, ‘He didn’t do anything.’ Well, I’m just trying to do it simply. Chekhov’s style is simple. And I don’t want to get in the way of the play. So it’s very stripped-down: just actors onstage behaving with each other. No singing light bulbs, no fancy sets. It has to be honest.”

In his research, Kaplan learned that Chekhov wrote the play when he was dying. “He was a doctor, so he knew what was going on,” the director stressed. “And it shows his response to the idea of going--with humor and a gentle spirit and without sentimentality: ‘OK, I’m going to die. But the best thing I can do is to be kind to the people around me.’ What I have to do is organize that information, then deny its having an effect on me.”

Kaplan (who was recently named artistic director at EST) paused for a moment. “The only thing I ask of audiences is that they leave their expectations at home. Just come, look and listen--and let Chekhov do it for you.”

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: “Camara Lenta/Slowmotion,” Argentine playwright Eduardo Pavlovsky’s dark story of a fading boxer (being presented on alternating nights in English and Spanish) opened last month at Stages to admiring press.

In this paper, Sylvie Drake praised director Paul Verdier’s translation of the work as well his “first-class company (of Tony Abatemarco, Hal Bokar and Grace Zabriskie). . . . “Pavlovsky has structured his play with the repetitiveness of new music. He gives us the stillness of sorrow as the immovable corners of a triangle: the ex-fighter, his trainer and self-appointed caretaker--and Rosa, the neighborly prostitute.”

In the Herald-Examiner, Michael Lassell was similarly impressed, describing the play as “as series of scenes, most of them virtual monologues, and all of them tour de forces of writing: elliptical, poetic and fully resonant with layers of meanings hinted at but never stated.” He also found Abatemarco’s performance as the boxer Dagomar “ranks with the best we’ve seen in L.A. so far this year.”

In Drama-Logue, Polly Warfield felt that “Pavlovsky’s writing, distinctively his own, shares elements of Beckett, Ionesco and Pinter. His dialogue, often monotonously repetitive like Beckett’s, is punctuated by the rhythm of its silences, like Pinter’s. The play’s mesmerizing power is much enhanced by Verdier’s sensitive direction.”

And from Maryl Jo Fox in the L.A. Weekly: “The play’s action is a wearing away--of the boxer’s bodily functions, of the manager’s dedication to his charge and of the prostitute’s separate identity. Except for a few powerful scenes, this is an evening of exquisite refinement: the slowly circling dialogue that describes stasis, the tautly calibrated performances. Abatemarco is indeed masterful.”