‘MINE ENEMIES’ IS SUFFERING FROM SERIOUS WOUNDS

Any play set in the waiting room of the Los Angeles County Medical Center intensive care unit might lead an audience to expect a “St. Elsewhere” episode--a credible expectation, given how most of Equity waiver theater is in love with TV.

What playwright Greg Suddeth delivers in “Mine Enemies,” at the Cast, is preachy racial drama interspersed with bedside monologues. As his play unravels, Suddeth gives new meaning to the word twist.

He twists Tom, a mild-mannered sociologist (Marty Pollio), into behaving like a randy maniac. Candy (Elizabeth MacDonald), a cool customer up to the point where she and Tom are mugged after they go to dinner, gets twisted into having a sudden yen for drugs.

Flippo (J.D. Pezzetti) tunes in on this, since he’s an off-duty narcotics cop whose beat is South-Central Los Angeles. Even this hardened pro is twisted Suddeth-style into a nice guy, getting chummy with Michael Thomas’s Enoch, a loquacious, Bible-quoting black thug who feels crucified by whites (Ronnie World’s paltry set features pictures of Jesus on the wall).

And, in the final twist, Enoch returns the favor to Flippo. This after a non-stop hour-and-a-half of a vicious, verbal racial war between the punk and the cop, with few punches and adjectives pulled.

“Mine Enemies” collapses under trite theatrical gestures and high-pressure incredulity. Flippo, for example, gives up his gun to the kid after baiting and mocking him. Afterward, Flippo can’t believe he did it; neither can we.

Suddeth’s writing is full of such arbitrary spicings--cruel humor, literary arias and weary borrowings from the Theatre of Menace. Director Brian Reise’s cast tries to cope with the scattershot text, but they have nothing fresh to inject along the way.

Performances at 800 N. El Centro Ave. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m., until Sept. 17. Tickets: $8; (213) 462-0265.

‘HUSBANDRY’

It’s indicative of the good intentions surrounding Frederick Combs’ Beverly Hills Playhouse production of Patrick Tovatt’s “Husbandry” that audience donations of canned goods for the homeless are being requested.

But first, let’s have a play to go along with the food drive. In establishing his family’s relationships, Tovatt fattens the story with so much expository filler that he nearly forgets such niceties as dramatic conflict. “Husbandry” ends up being a kind of paragon of sleep-inducing naturalism.

The once-prosperous farm Les and Dee (Don Dubbins and Anne Haney) run is on the brink, but they try to soft-pedal their laments to their visiting son Harry and his wife, Bev (Robert Parucha and Cheryl Anderson). The entire first act consists of: (1) Les and Dee’s quiet moment together; (2) Harry and Bev’s arrival and dinner; (3) Harry, then Dee, nursing insomnia with coffee and bourbon; (4) Harry and Dee reviewing a family album.

Tovatt creates dialogue to match the action. Les actually says, “You can call me anything except late for supper.” Dee really says, “The water will be ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” Honest.

Everyone is so nice in Tovatt’s world, apparently, that they have a hard time voicing their concerns. In Dee’s case, it’s that Harry should move his family onto the farm to run it with Les.

“Husbandry” then veers from a dull Hallmark card into a windy paean to the family farmer. Its politics are refreshing (“Corporations are poisoning the Earth”), but all sense of a family truly agonizing over a decision is lost in obvious plotting and messages.

Haney’s Dee is a cornfed matriarch, and you can almost believe that Dubbins’ Les might do best retiring. But like Parucha’s and Anderson’s, they’re performances without passion. Richard D. Smart’s set and costumes and Mary Keefe’s lights are true to this production: plain and staid.

Performances at 254 S. Robertson Blvd. Fridays through Sundays, 8 p.m., until Sept. 27. Tickets: $12; (213) 465-0070.

‘MACBETH’

When the lights came up for the first act of “Macbeth,” a “guest production” at Stages’ outdoor amphitheater last Friday night, the last thing anyone wanted was a painful experience. An all-black version of Shakespeare’s textually difficult but immensely rewarding tragedy sounded exciting.

Dominic Hoffman’s staging is still set in bloody Scotland, but when the witches appear (Nancy Cheryll Davis, Nancy Renee and Deborah Swisher), it feels like we’re in some undergraduate choreographer’s nightmare. In ribbon dresses and black leotards and uttering each line with melodramatic breathiness, these three “weird sisters” seem likelier to try out for an MTV video than tempt Macbeth into murder. Double, double, toil and trouble.

It soon becomes clear that everyone was directed for maximum melodrama and breathiness. Or shouting level. Howard Mungo’s Duncan, to name one, barks his lines into unintelligibility. Sarina Grant’s Lady Macbeth promises an evil figure and delivers a wilting flower. Cheryl Tyre-Smith’s Hecate is a hammy showcase routine that’s too unskilled to be even taken as a lampoon.

If J. D. Hall doesn’t cut a convincing figure as Macbeth, he speaks the lines decently, and Hawthorne James’ Macduff projects the pain of a betrayed patriot. But Hoffman’s plodding staging (only accentuated by slow-motion murder and battle scenes) finally makes “Macbeth” evaporate in the mind.

Performances at 1540 N. McCadden Place Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., until Sept. 12 (bring a coat or blanket). Tickets: $8.50-$10; (213) 465-1010.

BEVERLY HILLS ONE-ACTS

John Herzfeld’s “Blueberry Mountain,” first half of a one-act double bill at Beverly Hills Playhouse, begins tautly, with a prison inmate (Patrick Dollaghan) coaxing a guard (Alphonse Walter) into unchaining him before his visiting wife arrives.

Herzfeld’s dialogue has modest glimpses of insight--how, for instance, both guard and prisoner are contained by the system. Instead of leaving well enough alone, Herzfeld has the wife (Jennifer Tilly) show up and send his piece into another, hysterical universe. Tilly’s shrill, babylike voice (unchanged from her LATC performance in “Tartuffe”) isn’t comedic at all; it italicizes the sad reality of a play gone awry. Deborah Dalton injudiciously directed, on an interesting gray set by Phil Schmidt.

Dalton stages the first scene of Douglas Lane’s imperceptible “The Key” in the playhouse’s courtyard, where Frank Doubleday’s Stevens and Gary Grossman’s Bubba haggle over a key in order to open the door which leads to . . . the theater.

We follow them inside, and they’re still haggling. Bubba has spent his half of the take from a heist they pulled, and most of Stevens’ as well. This leads Stevens--don’t ask how--into the bedroom of a bored, oversexed housewife (Micole Mercurio). Then hubby (Walter) walks in. “The Key” illogically goes from buddy comedy to sex comedy, confusing nonsense for absurdism.

Performances at 254 S. Robertson Blvd. Saturdays and Sundays, 3 p.m., until Sept. 13. Tickets: $8; (213) 466-1767.