‘Miss Fairchild’ at Little Victory / ‘Tract’ at Shepard / ‘Victoriana’ at Powerhouse

What if you’re a star-struck janitor in a mental hospital, and one of your favorite stars is a patient? That’s Francine’s problem (Murphy Cross) in Susan Stauter’s new play, “Miss Fairchild Sings,” at the Little Victory Theatre.

Perhaps “problem” overstates it. In Stauter’s conception, it’s closer to Francine’s “thing,” just as Nicky’s thing is to play accordion to the patients (Lee Wilkof). Change-of-life crises these aren’t.

The person with the crisis seems to be star/patient Miss Fairchild (Elmarie Wendel), but by the time she arrives on the scene.

One reason is the hackneyed exchanges. (Nicky, who has a reputation as a jokemeister, to Francine: “We could make beautiful music together.”) Marla (Doris Hess) is finding it harder and harder to put up with Francine’s constant concern for Miss Fairchild; about the deepest Stauter takes matters is when Marla calls the obsession “unnatural,” as in lesbianism. But when the best a playwright can do for a scene’s climax is having Marla say, “It’s not easy being your friend,” with Francine responding, “You’re no walk in the park either,” it’s time to start another draft.

Things ultimately end up badly for Miss Fairchild, who does indeed sing (Wendel doesn’t spark up the show, but she does remind you of Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard”). Stauter has written neither with enough comic energy to get us over the tale’s glumness nor with enough dramatic conviction to lend these lives a tragic pitch.

Director Constance Grappo’s cast extends itself as much as the material will allow, especially Wilkof, who plays a mean accordion. When an audience member became ill the night this reviewer attended, and the performance was momentarily stopped, Wendel and company regrouped and started up the action valiantly. It was the only theatrical moment of the evening.

Performances are at 3326 Victory Blvd., Burbank, on Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets: $12-$15; (213) 466-1767.

‘An American Tract’

Inside Barbara White Morgan’s “An American Tract,” at the Richmond Shepard Theatre Studios, is a compelling drama waiting to get out. The play’s blueprint is clear: Anne (Ursaline Bryant) has worked her way out of the ghetto and bought herself a tract home in a lily-white Orange County suburb. She’s looking for comfort, as well as a way to keep son Rodney away from the gangs (Lenny Hicks). But will the neighborhood go along?

This one eventually does--the play has a happy ending and for all the potential time-bombs Morgan sets up, nothing much really happens. It’s just that the neighborhood is ludicrously stereotyped, and hard to figure. Anne is a night nurse. Could she even make the down payment on what sounds like the most exclusive planned community south of Rolling Hills Estates? Yet Tim Glasby’s very plain set makes the tract look more like middle-class Irvine. If so, it’s not the kind of place where a high school girl has her coming out as a debutante (Valerie Michaels, replacing Jeremy Green).

In other words, the world of the play isn’t there yet. The best we get is Hicks, who strongly conveys a kid torn between a new, alienating home and his old bloody turf.

Clay Freeman’s staging is, at this phase, a workshop production.

Performances are at 6476 Santa Monica Blvd. on Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m., through May 15. Tickets: $12.50; (213) 466-1767.

‘Victoriana’

Another show with interesting intents and faulty execution is the new Theatre of Note production at the Powerhouse, “Victoriana.” It’s an extremely bifurcated affair in which the first half, titled “A Ripping Musicale,” is a rather sad-faced music-hall revue with four street tarts, followed by Dennis J. Carlile’s Jack the Ripper-inspired “Carved in the Fog,” based on J. R. Hall’s poems. Both pieces are going for varying shades of threatening darkness, yet that requires a critical but missing ingredient: taut performances.

Michael R. Pos and Cecelia Saynt’s musical arrangements for “Musicale” try to blend atonalities with music hall verve, undone by Joseph Megel’s aimless direction and wobbly singing.

The point behind “Carved,” with Dyanne Dirosario as a Victorian woman of the night and Phil Ward as Jack, is as murky as its mood. Director Janis Hashe never injects a trace of danger into the action despite Hall’s obsession in his verse with knife imagery.

Performances are at 3116 2nd St., Santa Monica, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 8 p.m., through May 4. Tickets: $7; (213) 392-6529.

‘LAPD Inspects America’

If homelessness isn’t a political issue, then nothing is. So why is “LAPD Inspects America,” by our one and only theater company of the homeless, the Los Angeles Poverty Department, so apolitical?

It may have something to do with the evidently frustrating experiences the group recently faced during its visit to San Francisco. The trip forms the basis for a show that feels ready to fall apart at any second. The theme that barely comes through is how a supposedly open-minded avant-garde art community can shabbily treat a group of uneducated urban artists.

A worthy issue, if only we could glimpse some artists at work. LAPD founder/leader John Malpede, who plays the group’s troublesome renegade, can’t seem to bring his people together for more than a minute’s concentration. Rather than focus on how and why Americans are casually put out to dry by society, LAPD, at the Boyd Street Theatre, has shifted its attention to personal and intergroup neuroses. Therapy isn’t theater.

Performances are at 301 Boyd St., downtown, on Fridays through Sundays, 8 p.m., until May 8. Tickets: $9.50; (213) 629-2205.