STAGE REVIEW : Comic-Book Terrorism in ‘Cat’s-Paw’

Ace newswoman interviews crazed terrorist in his secret hideaway! Film at 11.

William Mastrosimone’s “Cat’s-Paw” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center could have been a terrific thriller. The premise is dynamite: an ambitious TV reporter (Christine Ebersole) and a clever sociopath (Anthony Geary) trying to outwit each other.

And behind the premise there’s a question worth asking: What’s the difference between a radical who is willing to slaughter innocent people in order to dramatize his cause and a TV journalist who is willing to stand aside and let such things happen, in the interest of a better story--and higher ratings?

Very little, “Cat’s-Paw” would say. Each person is sacrificing human considerations to a goal which may look larger, but which is really a mask for his or her personal ambition. Users, both.

There’s no problem with that message. But the first duty of a thriller is to make the audience believe what’s happening. That isn’t achieved at LATC. Mastrosimone is so eager to bring its characters to judgment--both the radical and the reporter--that he fails to give them a plausible action.

Rather than a case study of what happens when the press tries to make a deal with terrorists, the play comes off as a comic-book fantasy, complete with cackling arch-villain making his escape high above our heads in the last frame. You haven’t seen the last of me, Batman!

Geary’s character begins as a clean-water advocate who has lost his patience with the political process and has formed an army--well, trio--to get action now. Their first official act is to take a hostage, a minor official from the Environmental Protection Agency.

(As played by Michael Cutt, he is the most credible person in the story, maybe because Mastrosimone doesn’t have an agenda for him. The details here ring true: the way Geary baits the official by leaving a loaded gun on the table, the way the man firmly resolves to spend more time with his family if he gets out of this. You wish that the play had concentrated on his drama, and let the larger questions go hang.)

The army’s second act is to blow up 27 people, something we only hear about, this being a play. I’m afraid that my first impulse was to laugh. There’s something irresistibly comic about the notion of a band of cutthroat environmentalists bringing Washington to its knees. It sounds like a sketch on the old “Saturday Night Live.”

Enter Miss Ebersole, blindfolded. A cool customer, she has agreed to do an exclusive TV interview with Geary in his secret warehouse (impressively imagined by set designer Douglas D. Smith). This will get his message out to the people and give her own career a boost. But will she go so far as to allow the EPA man to be murdered on camera? Stay tuned for Act II.

The situation keeps getting stronger and stronger, and more and more contrived. The details here seem all wrong. What good is a taped interview going to do Geary’s cause--couldn’t the network chop it all up and make him look even worse than he does now? Why is he relieved to hear that the only person who knows that Ebersole has come here is her husband--wouldn’t he have some interest in trailing her?

But what really throws you is the finale, when Geary discards his mask of conservationist and is revealed to be a mere publicity junky. In fact the whole thing seems to have been an attempt to get the attention of Ebersole, on whom he has a fixation.

We’re back to Mastrosimone’s first play, “Extremities,” concerning a sick guy tailing a beautiful girl. If this were really to have been a play of ideas, our revolutionary would have been as sharp and as sane as Lenin, circa 1917, and Ebersole would have to do some real thinking about her role as a professional onlooker.

As it is, she’ll probably do a weekend special on the encounter, having got some dandy film. It’s not a surprise that Bill Bushnell’s actors (including Kelly Wolf as Geary’s ill-fated henchperson) have some trouble relating to each other in “Cat’s-Paw”--the whole thing seems a shaggy dog story, without the humor.

But we can credit Ebersole with getting the pert female news-anchor’s persona down pat, particularly when the camera starts to roll. This is Jessica Lyons, coming to you from the imagination of William Mastrosimone, which I don’t quite understand.

Plays through May 15. Performances at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays, with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets $10.50-$25. 514 S. Spring St.; (213) 627-5599.

‘CAT’S-PAW’

William Mastrosimone’s play, at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Director Bill Bushnell. Producer Diane White. Set Douglas D. Smith. Costumes Marianna Elliott. Lighting Todd A. Jared. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Stage manager Jill Johnson. With Michael Cutt, Anthony Geary, Kelly Wolf and Christine Ebersole.