STAGE REVIEWS : FRINGE FESTIVAL : ‘TAORMINA’

Baron Wilhelm Von Gloeden was a German photographer who became known, around the turn of the century, for his photographs of nude teen-age boys in his adopted hometown of Taormina, Sicily.

No one in Taormina found anything objectionable in Von Gloeden’s work, or in his inclination to go to bed with his models, according to the authors of two one-acts at the Celebration Theater. For dramatic purposes, this lack of conflict is unfortunate. After the baron’s death, though, Il Duce’s government decided the pictures were obscene.

“Incident at Taormina” is Tim Kelly’s account of the 1936 trial of Von Gloeden’s assistant (and former model) on charges of possession of pornography. It’s most interesting for its depiction of two Taormina magistrates, sharply enacted by Shelly Desai and Kirk Muriyan, who resist the moralistic decrees of imperial Rome. But the play’s final speech makes too much of their powers of persuasion.

Michael Shere directed both plays and wrote the second, “Conversation at Taormina,” in which A. Don Altman plays the baron himself--with a shaved head and wearing a crisp, creamy suit.

This is no conversation, for we see and hear no one but the baron, as he tries to sell photos to an unseen someone while also cajoling one of his young subjects into the desired pose. Slides of a few of the baron’s photos add visual variety, but the monologue fails to transcend the flatness of its genre.

Performances, part of the Purple Stages series, are at 426 N. Hoover St., tonight, Thursday, Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $10; (213) 661-1982.