‘When the Trumpet Sounds’ at Inner City; ‘Just So’ at Cast; ‘Some Kind of Loving’ at Eagle Theatre; Noonan’s ‘Messages’ at Burbage

“When the Trumpet Sounds,” Anthony Bean’s one-man show about how a ghetto kid becomes a professor of psychology appears to be about the triumph of, as the current parlance puts it, secular humanism.

In fact, Bean’s piece, at the Inner City Cultural Center, is really a Christian fable; “The Dark Night of the Soul” might have been a terrific title for this, if only St. John of the Cross hadn’t used it first.

The sea change of Bean’s Richard Fineman from self-pitying fatherless wanderer to intellectual is a miraculous moment of faith, that perhaps surpasses all knowing. It all depends on if you believe.

The problem is that because Fineman’s growing-up process in a one-parent family and rough neighborhood is so grueling in Bean’s depiction (one that feels born of experience), the Epiphany seems hardly enough for such a Saul-to-Paul transformation--even if it occurs as Fineman watches his mother’s near-death.

Ironically, it’s Bean’s own rich capacities as an actor that throw doubt on the Christian message. His shift between professor introducing the story, young boy enduring hardship and the boy’s elderly pal Charlie recalling slavery shows that Bean can drive an acting vehicle at full gear. The boy’s frantic attempts at retrieving his father are also a search for self-identity, and Bean’s uncompromising depiction of this, as well as Charlie’s humanity, form a complex, psychological drama resisting easy solutions. You wonder if even the professor accepts the miracle.

Performances are at 1308 S. New Hampshire Ave., Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 3 p.m. until March 13. Tickets: $10; (213) 387-1161.

‘Just So’

“She” gets fed up with “He” and leaves. The scene feels like a set of snapshot images from a failed marriage. Then, a director peeks out from off stage and asks the players to take a bow. Play’s over.

Only it’s not, because the players (Kathleen Garrett and Garret Pearson) wonder about the scene’s validity--this after having played it every night for seven years. The director’s also the writer (Philip Reeves), so he feels possessive of it, especially as he claims that this is how his own marriage broke up. But why stick to the facts, when they’re dull?

Matters only become stranger, or Pirandellian, in Rob Sullivan’s “Just So,” at the Cast. It’s a fiction about a fiction about something that may or may not have happened, reminiscent of writing by Donald Barthelme and William Gass--without the poetry. Sullivan’s concept is a chess-like game, yet his dialogue and character interplay is stunningly banal.

The name of this game is authorship: who takes responsibility for it (in theater, perhaps actors do end up knowing their characters better than the playwright) and how the creative act is never free of compromise. But Mike, once he’s established as a wimp who will get whipped in any story conference, is a cipher (Reeves doesn’t add much of his own, either). The actors are archetypally frustrated by the venture (so why have they done it for so long?), which is why Garrett and Pearson come off as authentic.

Sullivan’s strategy becomes truly tortured, though, when Isobel Estorick’s Molly, who has been watching all this from the sidelines, injects her own comments. Molly is said to be the director’s ex-wife, but Estorick is so without presence and lacking a divorcee’s pain that we wonder if that’s not a fiction as well. Director Guy Giarrizzo steers things away from the pretentious to the playful, but there’s no escaping a play that uninventively explores the mysteries of invention.

Performances are at 800 N. El Centro Ave. on Mondays through through Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Tickets: $8; (213) 462-0265.

‘Some Kind of Loving’

If you know the feeling of being up late, locked by insomnia to a TV set, and numbed by videos and other shallow cavalcades of ‘80s hipness, you already know the feeling of watching “Some Kind of Loving” at the Eagle Theatre.

We’re served up the familiar ingredients of AIDS-era, L.A.-style sex comedies filled with the young, the affluent and the white. Sam can’t satisfy Linda. Linda becomes a lesbian. Bill aerobicizes his way out of a relationship with Karin. Karin moves in with Sam. He’s unemployed, she’s not. He spends time talking to his penis.

Ken Portnoy’s play goes so far as to suggest that all men do this, and women will just have to accept it. But it’s impossible to take the suggestion from a show so grindingly unfunny as this one is. Portnoy’s directorial pacing is as monotonous as his writing, but he’s hardly helped by clumsy video interludes and actors who are either soporific or thudding hams.

Performances are at 182 N. Robertson Blvd. on Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m. Tickets: $12.50-$13.50; (213) 465-0070.

‘Messages’

Another show obsessed with sex in the ‘80s is “Messages,” a triplet of John Ford Noonan one-acts at the Burbage Theatre. The real message of this world premiere (so billed in the program), alas, is that the over-prolific Noonan had best slow down and rethink priorities.

“The Road Back To Real Feeling” depicts a self-centered saloon owner (Rod Arrants) telling his wife about his great day, assuming all the while that she’s in the bathroom with the door closed. It’s soon obvious that she’s not home, but the whole piece’s action depends on him continuing his monologue to a closed door. The play and the character are virtually mugged by the play’s own device.

Phone sex and infidelity are the subjects of “A Wet One from East Rutherford.” Angel’s happy as an exotic dancer in New Jersey (Randie Jean Davis), but Ritchie (Robert Mangiardi) wants to take her away to Indiana, where he’s about to start his job as basketball coach at Ball State (hint, hint, nudge, nudge). A black New Jersey Nets star is repeatedly referred to with a racial epithet, Angel simulates one of her dances and the couple is incredibly reconciled at the end. ‘Nuff said.

Noonan hits bottom, though, with “Those Summer Nights When the Dark Comes Late” (where do these titles come from?) about Didi and Mava (Patricia Estrin and Lycia Naff), two lesbians threatened by Didi’s ex-lover. The women are cardboard cutout creations sliced and diced by silly plot devices and titillating effects. Susan Snyder’s direction matches Noonan’s writing for carelessness.

Performances are at 2330 Sawtelle Blvd. on Thursdays through Sundays, 8:30 p.m. Tickets: $12; (213) 478-0897.