STAGE REVIEWS : 2 AIDS Plays Put a Face on the Statistics

It was a play--Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart”--that brought attention to the political side of the AIDS crisis, with its charge that government officials had dragged their feet on AIDS research in the early ‘80s because the disease seemed limited to gays.

What about the human side of the AIDS tragedy? Two plays on smaller Los Angeles stages address themselves to this: “Seven Sundays” by Michael Scott Reed, at the Carpet Company Stage, and “Jerker” by Robert Chesley, at the Fifth Estate Theatre.

“Seven Sundays” is mild, “Jerker” raw--this is the script that the FCC found “offensive” when excerpts were broadcast on KPFK-FM. But both plays put a face on the public health statistics.

“Seven Sundays” concerns an AIDS patient (Michael Tulin) and a young man who comes to visit him in the hospital every Sunday (Joe Dahlman). The two aren’t friends at first, but they become so, and the visitor comes to realize that he is twice as scared of life as a man who is about to die.

But his gain at the end is only incremental, which makes it an honest play. It’s also a well-staged one. (Lisa Mount was the director.) A silent nurse (Cassi Mackey) comes in to tidy up the patient’s room between scenes and we remember why we’re here.

The two actors relate nicely from their separate worlds--Tulin’s sometime-hustler versus Dahlman’s meek bank clerk. The downside is a certain obviousness in the writing. Dahlman’s character, in particular, comes off as a stereotype. “Seven Visits” touches you, but you don’t forget it’s a play.

“Jerker” takes much bigger chances. The first scenes show two gay men (Michael Kearns, David Stebbins) engaging in what is euphemistically known as telephone sex--without the euphemisms. The actors stay under the sheets on their separate sides of the stage, but we get the idea.

Gamey stuff, even for the ‘80s. But, as Shaw once said, you don’t get the bottom half of human nature without eventually confronting the top half. One night one of the guys says, “Could we just talk?” This leads to, of all things, a friendship--although still confined to the phone.

Then the calls start not to be answered. In a way, “Jerker” hangs up on us, too. Rather, it shuts down, like a damaged immune system. Having left nothing to the imagination at the beginning, it leaves us to finish the tale by ourselves. Sadly, by this point in the ‘80s, we all can do so.

I’ve never seen a play that went from the near-pornographic to the tragic, but “Jerker” achieves it. Its early scenes will strike many viewers as both too graphic and too juvenile for comfort, and they should stay away from Kelly Hill’s production at the Fifth Estate.

Others will recognize Chesley’s script as serious and honest. Ironically, “Jerker’s” proper home, as a play of voices, may indeed be radio (although never in excerpt). But if it can’t be done there, let it be done in the theater, in front of an audience that knows what to make of it.

“Seven Sundays” plays at 8 p.m. Fridays-Sundays at 5262 W. Pico Blvd. (213) 466-1767 or 932-9321. “Jerker” plays at 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Sundays, with an extra 10 p.m. show Saturdays, at 1707 N. Kenmore Ave.; (213) 666-0434.

As if they don’t put enough energy into their regular show, “Carnage,” the Actors’ Gang is offering a late-late show, “Freaks,” at the Tiffany Theatre.

Written by R. A. White and Michael Schlitt, it gives each of the company a chance to play a sideshow freak--Frog Boy, Hermaphrodite, Pig Girl, Legless Wonder, etc.

A lot of energy gets generated, but to this viewer it was a case of 12 freaks in search of an action. All the performances are juicy, with special honors to Lisa Moncure as a mechanical fortune teller--this one specializing in bad fortunes. “Give up now! You have no prospects! It’s all meaningless!”

Performances Fridays-Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. 8532 Sunset Blvd. (213) 652-6165.