Music Says, Does It All in Diversionary Theatre’s Production of ‘Disappearing Act’

They bill it as a musical, but if you go to Diversionary Theatre’s “Disappearing Act,” playing at the West Coat Production Company through Dec. 19, you’ll be disappointed if you expect a plot, dialogue or even characters.

What that leaves is music. And those 23 songs--which constitute a world premiere of the first original musical by Michael Oster, a 27-year-old self-described director-choreographer- composer-playwright now visiting from Boston--are simply terrific.

The goal of Diversionary Theatre, as articulated by their artistic director, Thomas Vegh, is “to present works by and for the gay-lesbian community.”

It seems a curiously self-limiting description. Certainly, Oster’s songs deal with gay themes, but they succeed in moving from the particular to the universal in much the same way Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy,” the Tony-award winning play about a drag queen, does.

In fact, if Fierstein wrote songs, one suspects that these melodic, full-bodied, sometimes outrageous and often bittersweet numbers about love and loss would be just the kind he would compose.

Of the three performers, Kip Niles is clearly the most professional. He moves easily from the tongue-in-cheek “Men Who Like Their Men” to “Faded Levi Jacket,” in which he takes the part of a man clinging to the one memento of his late lover not deemed worth pilfering by his lover’s family.

The greenest member of the three, Fred Tate, sometimes falters but is winning with the winsome “What Do Ya Know,” in which he describes a romance with a man who is too good to be true. Nick Turco shines in “I Slept With a Zombie,” an homage to the unresponsive lover.

On Saturday night, the understudy, David Lee Carlson, stepped in briefly and effectively as a snide vision in “Nightmare.”

John-Bryan Davis, whose name seems to be inseparable from the costume credits for every small theater in town these days, has, again, come up with inventive costume ideas. Particularly amusing are his outfits for the “Shakedown in the Breakdown Lane,” in which the company is dressed as drivers and their cars--from their racing gloves down to the flashlights hanging out of their pockets like headlights.

The capable musical direction by Steven Schwarz, who played the piano on the small, bare stage with a quiet, quizzical air that sometimes seemed as funny as the antics beside him. Oster did a fine job with the direction and choreography. Next time, if he gets a text to match his music, he should have quite a show.

Performances at 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays through Dec. 19 at the West Coast Production Company, 1845 Hancock St., San Diego.

‘Brain Fever’

In Hollywood, there are people who hawk ideas much in the spirit that hucksters in “Guys and Dolls” sell “solid gold” watches for a dollar. Judging from Sledgehammer Theatre’s production of “Brain Fever,” playing at the Sixth Avenue Playhouse through Dec. 19, it looks like the young company has bought a few ideas better left on the shelf.

It’s too bad because one can spy hints of gold that have yet to be panned from what is now a confusing stream of consciousness.

At the heart of this world premiere play by H.P. Taubman and Scott Feldsher is the story of a director taking a drug that he believes will allow him to film the inside of his mind, thus enabling him to make the first “psychic” movie. Instead, however, the drug is making him crazy and killing him.

This by itself is a potent starting place for a commentary on what for many is the Hollywood dream of greatness fueled and, ultimately undercut by the self-destructive appetite for sensation. All too quickly though, the script breaks down into a blithering mix of a pseudo movie star (a bisexual mock-Jimmy Stewart), a B-movie villain (an evil Nazi doctor who supplies the drug), and a stereotype of a Tennessee Williams heroine who spouts lines from “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “The Glass Menagerie.”

Add to this a lean, mean producer who flies down to the set of Condomcoa (an African rubber plantation where they manufacture condoms) and stir--but don’t drink unless you want to end up with a whizz-bang of a headache.

It’s enough to wonder whether the brain-fever drug really exists and Feldsher, who directed the play, is using it.

It seems cruel and unusual to name most of the actors who after all, didn’t stand a chance in this “Charge of the Light Brigade.” Ditto the costumes and set.

The best moments are provided by the disturbing, jungle-like sound design by John Gange, Peter Huestis and Joel Nowak and the video portions, directed by Dave Cannon, on which commentators from the Tinsel Town Tattler (Elizabeth Backenstow, Philip Charles Sneed and Paul Eggington) comment on the movie production. There, at least, most of the humor is comprehensible, consistent and pretty much on target.

Performances at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Dec. 19 at the Sixth Avenue Playhouse, 1620 Sixth Ave., San Diego.

‘Romeo and Juliet’

It is important for college theater departments to tackle Shakespeare, but one goes to such productions with a certain amount of trepidation. After all, some of our greatest actors spend their professional careers learning how to approach the complexity of Shakespearean roles. What, then, can students offer in the early stages of their training?

Not surprisingly, there is an emotional depth lacking in many of the performances in San Diego State University’s “Romeo and Juliet,” playing through Dec. 12 at the Don Powell Theatre. Happily though, the cast, under the direction of drama professor Mack Owen, brings much vitality and humor to the production--enough to make the classic glimmer and, at times, even sparkle.

Owen sets the show in modern times with modern dress (elegantly designed by Dianne J. Holly) while keeping the text intact. This inspired idea lends a feeling of immediacy. It fails in less worked-out sections such as the part in which video camera technicians follow some of the characters around before the killings, suggesting vaguely that some prescient producer is going to put the tragedy on the evening news.

Then, too, in a wild mix of images, the set by Nick Reid, nicely lighted by R. Craig Wolf, puzzles by suggesting a Roman ruin in the midst of the yuppie milieu.

As Juliet on opening night, Kimber Leanne Riddle seemed almost in awe of the words she says in the first of what was divided into two acts. In the second however, she comes into her own--a radiant, lovely and loving Juliet--giving a performance with the word “promise” written all over it.

Reg Rogers, in contrast, delivers the vibrancy and the humor but, on the whole, lacks the poetry called for by Romeo. Similarly, Zachary Weintraub captured the joking nature of Mercutio but lacked the ironic sensibility that should shadow his humor.

The less-dimensional characters fared better: Eric Gerleman threatening as hot-headed Tybalt; Sean O’Shea as the earnest Paris, and Michael Ball and Shauna Bloom, acquitting themselves well as the chilly parental Capulets.

Confusion steps in with the nurse (Alexandra Argyropoulos) who seems at once too young, well-dressed and indiscriminately salacious in her part and with Friar Laurence (Steve Gallion) who wears hippie-like jeans and sandals under his friar’s robes--hardly the kind of spiritual leader that this smartly heeled class would subscribe to.

The main problem with the wistful, romantic music by Leslie Banach and Charles Maynes is that it starts and ends too abruptly in the middle of scenes. Martin Katz designed the skillful combat scenes.

Performances at 8 p.m. through Saturday at the Don Powell Theatre (the former Main Stage Theatre) at San Diego State University.