FRINGE FESTIVAL : STAGE REVIEWS : ‘MRS. STANTON AND SUSAN’

Actress Miriam Reed performed her one-woman production, “Mrs. Stanton and Susan,” before what you might call an empty house. To be exact, the only patrons were two critics, thus establishing the clearest definition of fringe theater to yet come out of the L.A. Festival.

To Reed’s credit, she didn’t appear affected by this devilish turn of events. She played the black hole of the 2nd Stage like a trouper. Unfortunately, she doesn’t troupe enough. Alternately enacting those two indomitable 19th-Century reformers, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Reed comports herself in the manner of a caretaker of the flame.

Watching the show recalls quiet university afternoons spent in a book-lined room with a visiting lecturer on the woman’s temperance and suffrage movement.

That’s pleasant and informative but it’s not theater. We know that such fighting spirits as Stanton and Anthony, despised as they were by male culture, had blood in their veins. You won’t find it here.

Director Michael Hackett and Reed (working from diaries, letters and writings) proceed with a kind of funereal caution. There’s no rhythm, no conflict, except as controversy might be factually described in some wire story. The two costumes by Sylvia Moss, however, are the real thing. But Reed needs to throw off the cloak.

Performances are at 6500 Santa Monica Blvd., Thursdays, 2 p.m., though Sept. 24; also Sunday and Sept. 20, 2 p.m. Tickets: $5. (213) 466-1767. Also shortened 35-minute versions, free, Thursdays at noon through Sept. 24.