THEY SATISFY IN ‘CHESTERFIELD WOMAN’ AT SKYLIGHT

“Somebody had made me their calling card, and death was written all over it.”

Welcome to “The Chesterfield Woman,” a Chandler-esque ‘40s murder mystery so stylish that you forgive its lack of narrative fire. Playwright Jeffrey Bloom and director Frederick King Keller salute gumshoe Philip Marlowe and film noir with a flare that is delectable.

The genre is hardboiled but the style is liquefaction: The floor of the Skylight Theater is black-and-white checkerboard, murky figures are dramatized in silhouette against a giant cyclorama, props are spare, costumes of the femme fatale unaggressively luscious, and the period songs (performed by Martina Victoria) torchy.

But the prize element is the cast: Mike Schacht’s perfectly pitched, chain-smoking Marlowe character, Sondra Currie’s creamy, copper-haired “victim,” and, among others in the 11-member show, Robert Ruth and Tony Dow’s terrific, scabrous pair of cops.

A key to the airiness of the production is a host of fluidly negotiated scenic blackouts that avoid the curse of seeming fragmentation.

The production smacks of a unifying eye among all hands. The playwright’s wife, Carole Bloom, produced, and actress Currie co-produced. Deborah Raymond and Dorian Vernacchio teamed on the sets and lights. Jon Gottlieb did the atmospheric sound design. The director’s wife, Elizabeth Keller, designed the costumes featuring wide, floral men’s ties that would stop a truck.

Performances at 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave. run Saturdays, 8:30 p.m., Sundays, 8 p.m., through May 24. Tickets: $12.50, (213) 466-1767.

‘PREDICAMENTS’

As you wait for the production to begin, all the light in the theater has been narrowed to a white square just big enough to accommodate a human head.

Are we going to look at videos? Not likely. This, after all, is the theater wing of Beyond Baroque.

Darkness swallows up the house, and the next image you see is startling in its disembodiment: under a single, intense light, the face of a turbaned, aristocratic-looking woman materializes through the white screen.

What ensues is a wonderful piece of performance theater. Actress Beatrice Manley, her voice dowager-imperial, proceeds to personify from the neck up the horrible predicament that led to her character’s decapitation literally at the hand of the minute hand of a giant church clock in Edgar Allan Poe’s comparatively unfamiliar short story, “A Predicament.”

The performance, lasting only 30 minutes and adhering to Poe’s lines, is unforgettable in its uneasy, dreamlike power and in Manley’s mesmerizing dramatization.

Director Alec Doyle, sharply supported by the stage and lighting concept of Tony Adbachi (Manley herself did the adaptation), has shaped an uncanny experience. Theatergoers of the exotic (or exotic theatergoers) should not miss it.

The program’s opening one-act, adapted by Wayne Lindberg from another Poe yarn, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” is more style than drama. Mark A. Edward’s dark set and lighting are atmospheric. But this time director Doyle can’t sustain the suspense. John Boyle plays the doomed figure with haunted gusto. This dramatization of Poe’s lines, however, creates more torpor than horror.

Performances at 681 Venice Blvd. (in the old Venice City Hall) run Saturdays through Sundays, 8:30 p.m. (no performance this Sunday), through May 23. Tickets: $6, (213) 822-3006.

‘SLEEPING BEAUTY’ AND ‘MANGO TEA’

Another wedding of one-acts at the Skylight Theater makes a strange match. One, “Sleeping Beauty,” subtitled “Not the Fairy Tale,” features a vivid and vital performance by actress Kate Stern. Some tuning fork has seemingly anointed her with the gift of a young, disciplined comedienne.

The play, by Laurence Klavan and briskly directed by Leonard Stern, also highlights a ripe, streetwise comedic performance by Bob Lipton. Otherwise, the work is an insubstantial comedy of relationships, a nest of scattered feathers.

The second, “Mango Tea,” comes from the mind of 21-year-old Paul Weitz, who appears under the influence of Freud and Frankenstein. But he’s talented. The dialogue, in a rich Gotham milieu, is sexually tantalizing. And the production’s tone under director Michael Grais is addictive.

The focus is on the reversal of a slave relationship between an unctuous daddy and his spoiled daughter, who’s a sexual snot. Matt Roe’s demented Daddy Warbucks fascinates with a quiet nastiness that both repels and attracts.

Elizabeth Gorcey cleverly plays the daughter like Goldilocks--dangerous and lascivious--and the actress becomes a full match for Roe. Together they make you squirm.

Performances are at 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave., Fridays 8:30 p.m., Saturdays 5 p.m., through May 9. Tickets: $8, (213) 466-1767.

‘SECRET LOVE’

For a breather, there’s nothing like getting back to American realism with some sturdy homosexual love stories.

The background music for playwright Robert Perring’s trio of one-acts, “Secret Love” at the Olio Theater, could be William Inge or Tennessee Williams--at least until the focus is on women loving one another. Then things turn sitcom--an unfortunate imbalance.

Zu Stears has directed the male pair of these two-character plays with some poignancy. But the evening’s melange is uneven.

By far the best production is “Reunion,” with excellent performances by David McGrath and David Gaines as an odd couple who tremulously relive their youthful love at a high school reunion. The writing and acting is genuine and nicely calibrated.

In “Best Man,” actor Allan Hayes is a coiled, visceral presence (like a younger Richard Gere). But the momentum, with an understudy in the opposite role on the night reviewed, floundered when it should have caromed.

In “Guest Room,” actresses Kriss Karr and Honey Goldberg-Bialo are directed by one of the show’s other actors (McGrath) and hopelessly burdened by a misfired attempt on the playwright’s part at light dramatic comedy.

Performances at 3709 Sunset Blvd., run Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., until June 7. Tickets: $10, (213) 663-8763 or 667-9556.