STAGE REVIEW : ‘Jester and Queen’ Tests Limits of Tediousness

If you’re on your way to see “The Jester and the Queen” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, brace yourselves to be deceived.

Also get ready for a multilingual international experience-- autorske divaldo (Czech for “author’s theater”) at its most extreme. Rarely a good thing in any language; worse when it’s in four languages, three of which you may not understand. And nothing in “The Jester and the Queen’s” inauspiciously slow start is designed to alter that opinion.

There’s this raunchy little set--a seedy throne on a seedy platform--that looks salvaged from a bankrupt bus-and-truck tour of “Exit the King” (design is by Leos Janacek and Jaromir Tichy). And there’s this Czech guy in jeans and a shirt speaking with “a slight Moravian accent” you could cut with a knife, pacing in front of the stage, telling you he’s in charge. He can do anything. He runs this show.

“ Egocentrismo creativo “ beams author/director/actor Boleslav Polivka, as he brazenly pushes tediousness too far. But every time you start to think, “This is boh -ring,” Polivka says it for you.

There is nothing more disconcerting than to have a performer confirm your own rotten opinion of his act. It’s the secret and the genius of this Czech mime/actor/clown who does it all: dissects, anticipates, improvises, ad-libs with the audience and even “flies.”

“ Je m’ennuie ,” echoes the strangely made-up queen (Chantal Poullain) in assorted rags who has wandered on stage and taken her place on the throne. “I am bored. I need a jester.” Polivka at your service . . . sort of.

“Dear friends, this moment we are sharing together,” he enthusiastically tells the fidgeting audience as the queen applies make-up that will transform him, “we theater people call it a boring bit.”

Right on. But also a turning point. Slowly (Polivka is nothing if not unhurried), he drags us into some sly, exquisitely muddled and labored non-events, keeping up a running commentary (he is also never speechless). “I’m coming down with something,” he notes, bending his knees and sinking lower and lower. “The queen is beside herself,” he announces, after she has had a ripsnortin’ fight with the king off stage and enters holding a replica of herself.

Polivka launches into a minor dissertation on the “alienation effect” in the theater of Bertolt Brecht and interrupts the performance to “let the spectators do some kind of cool intellectual thinking” while he and Poullain work out their differences on stage.

Is this comedy or what?

It’s lunacy--barely recognizable, tinged with an East European sensibility, but skillful and subtle. It’s also mixed in with some metaphysical meanderings that keep you in your seat even when they’re not that funny, and that have you coming back after intermission (despite the temptation to decamp) with the simple promise that the second half will be better--and shorter. Again, Polivka has anticipated what’s on everyone’s mind, including his own.

Why do we believe this man? And why do we stay? Maybe because he’s so unbelievable, so timely, so droll, so winning and such a rascally buffoon after all--precisely what the queen ordered, even if he does take some warming up to. There is plenty of low-brow stuff too: Pratfalls, some tooth-ache comedy, a series of bow-and-arrow routines, a flying act and a good deal of audience participation that comes off beautifully (or did Sunday at least).

While Poullain (Mrs. Polivka in real life) has considerable dash of her own, this is essentially a one-person show. Polivka’s puppet master and puppet, and he plays those strings like a virtuoso, saving some real surprises for the end.

But does “The Jester and the Queen” really have to take so long to get going? This writer says non . It’s a 90-minute amusement perilously stretched to two hours.

One way to shorten it is to kill the intermission--a favorite with playwrights. Another is to rev up the beginning. The rewards that come to those with the fortitude to slog through the interminable preamble are ultimately worth it, but do they really have to be so costly?

Performances at 514 S. Spring St. run Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m., until June 5. Tickets: $22-$25; (213) 627-5599.