STAGE REVIEWS: VARIATIONS ON A RITE OF PASSAGE : ‘Landscape of the Body’ Hits a Sour Note When Dead Diva Sings and Steals the Show

Ugliness blights John Guare’s “Landscape of the Body.”

The characters’ prettiest dreams are blotted out by horrible incidents that seem to arise out of the atmosphere they breathe. Some of these events are so incongruous as to be funny, yet it’s a kind of comedy that’s best appreciated from the safety and serenity of the afterlife--which is where one of the characters happens to live.

Guare’s writing is as littered as his landscape. The narrative is an unwieldy thing--complicated and fragmented as well as occasionally preposterous. The language is rich--excessively so in the case of the songs that keep interrupting the action.

Those songs are both the best and the worst parts of Richard Arrington’s staging of Guare’s 1977 opus at the Court. They’re sung by Rosalie (Susan Tyrrell), a coke-sniffing porno performer who died in a collision with a bicycle. From the perspective of the hereafter, Rosalie offers wry comments on earthly goings-on and helps re-create a few scenes from the past.

Tyrrell--with her blonde bob, ruby red lips, assertive cheekbones and throaty voice--is indubitably entertaining as the heavenly diva. But her songs are only obliquely related to the rest of the play. And her star presence makes more of them than they deserve. She steals the show--not necessarily to the show’s benefit.

In the most flagrant example of this, Tyrrell sings the opening number of the second act--a wispy recollection of youthful illusions--with a noose around her neck, her face in shadow and a chorus line of masked executioners in the background.

It’s an arresting sight, but it destroys the song--which isn’t even Rosalie’s to sing, according to the published version of the text. Instead, it should be sung by Bert (Byron Thames), Rosalie’s 12-year-old nephew (15 in this production), who has moved to Greenwich Village from Bangor, Maine, and is rapidly changing from All-American kid to budding criminal. The song would have been much more pointed and poignant coming from Bert than it is from a dead woman.

Bert’s mother, Betty (Susan Barnes), is supposed to be the central character. She and Bert venture into New York to bring Rosalie to Bangor. When Rosalie is killed, Betty takes her apartment and her job and stays in the big city. Then Bert is murdered, and Betty is charged with the crime.

Barnes takes us with her most of the way, but she doesn’t make us believe that the 36-year-old Betty went from Bangor to porn actress in a few weeks--that transformation is a writer’s arbitrary manipulation, not a stroke of imaginative incongruity. Yet if anyone could pull it off, it would be someone who looks lusher, perhaps dumber, than Barnes.

Tyrrell’s flamboyance is no help to Barnes; these two don’t look, sound or behave like sisters. But Barnes and Thames do build a convincing mother-son bond.

Guare provides too much detail about Bert’s killing. As Betty observes, “The mystery’s always greater than the solution.” Bert’s killer either shouldn’t be portrayed at all, or portrayed much more fully. As it is, the character has a central position in the play’s climax that--again--seems arbitrary.

Still, the supporting actors--J. E. Freeman, Ted Sod, Jason Oliver, Pamela Segall and Melissa Fahn (her big speech unfortunately truncated)--are sharp, and Ian Patrick Williams contributes a dazzling turn as a maniacal Southern gentleman.

Performances are at 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., Thursdays through Sundays at 8 p.m. Tickets: $15-$17; (213) 465-0070.