‘How It Hangs’ at Figtree; ‘On the Line’ by Group Repertory; ‘Soldiers Without Guns’ at Stage Lee Strasberg; ‘Today’s Special’ in Pasadena

A blowsy, searing, comical play about abused women has crept into town at the Figtree Theatre. “How It Hangs,” driven by rich, salty dialogue, dramatizes a serious subject with stinging and raucous zeal.

The four women in this play may act liberated but they’re not. And they’re not feminists. They’re desert scorpions.

Playwright Grace McKeaney, in a West Coast premiere of a work staged only once before (at the Louisville Actors Theatre), has written a feminist play all right. The anger becomes scorching, but these women love men, or they’re working awfully hard at it.

They’re not young. They’re mid-30s and up, members of The Temporary Shelter for Battered Women Past and Present Looking to Get Better in Lusk, Wyoming. They hold meetings in a tidy little filling station known as Art’s Parts. There’s one male character, a sweetheart of a mechanic (Ferdinand Lewis), who represents the possibilities out there.

Doll (Marcy K. Ross) may be under daddy’s thumb (which is battery) but she’s sexually reckless and writes erotic poetry.

Girlene (Julie Farrell) is pregnant and about to marry her lover, who once broke her arm (“I’m clearing out the pain to make a way,” she says).

The once wild Sister Swannee turned self-styled evangelist will interrupt Doll’s poetry, pull out binoculars and chortle, “You know, at this certain angle we got just a wonderful view of Wink’s Minuteman Motor Court, damn its existence.” Latecomer Rowdy (Gail Kingsley) burns with cynicism: “What I found in my experience is that funny feeling between your legs tends to kinda fade a little bit the more times you get your fool head knocked up into the parlor windowsill.”

Director Kersten Anderson draws focused portraits from this strong quartet. And playwright McKeaney, in writing a ringing, hour-long one-act about country instead of urban women, captures an ambiguity that is refreshing. (Local playwright Gina Wendkos and Easterner McKeaney should check out each other’s plays.)

Performances run at 6537 Santa Monica Blvd., Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets: $7. (213) 876-8701.

‘On the Line’

During World War II, women didn’t have men. They had work in defense plants. The women in Edwin Gordon’s “On the Line” shed one kind of line (prostitution) for another (assembling bombardier sights in a Detroit war factory faced with a manpower shortage).

These women happen to be all black (white prostitutes apparently being in short supply), hired by a desperate division head who becomes their savior. The union foreman and executives and their wives see red. Meanwhile, illiterate Rosie the Riveters develop a new craft and self-esteem.

That’s a terrific premise and reportedly “based on actual events,” according to the playwright. The Group Repertory Theatre production, directed by Bert Rosario, is uneven, though. The set design (by Arlan Boggs) is painted half robin’s egg blue and and half pink, suggesting a Pee-wee Herman dollhouse. Staging is stilted rather than fluid.

But nothing hurts more than the playwright’s strange decision to limit his play to one prostitute, the madam. We are asked to imagine her addressing 200 unseen whores. Actress Gloria Rusch, physically and vocally, is wonderful in the role, all sass and mouth. She steals the show but she can’t save it.

The hookers’ heroic executive ally is vividly performed by Richard Royce, and Larry Kelly’s callow back-stabber smirks well. But the men never change suits. At least Rusch and the other actress (company wife Lynn S. Rosen-Bright) have wardrobes.

Performances run at 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets:$8-$12. (818) 769-7529.

Soldiers Without Guns

Not all women joined the assembly line in World War II. Another kind of home-front was Red Cross work, a kind of quilting bee for war.

At Stage Lee Strasberg, Debra Jo Thornton’s premiering “Soldiers Without Guns,” set in Chattanooga, is not so much a play as a rambling tableau-like chronicle of five women pining for the day their boys come home. Nerves strained, they also fight among themselves. One of these home-fronters (performed with verve by playwright Thornton) struggles not to cheat on her man. She finally does.

That’s war, the play tells us.

And that’s the trouble. Unlike those streetwalkers in the Detroit factory in “On the Line,” these women aren’t fresh characters (but at least there’s more of them).

The most interesting character, who has no histrionic moment at all (except for some token vocals), is black. Myria Moore portrays a sweet, badanna-topped, almost Aunt Jemina character who subtly grows in self-confidence, style, and stature. (Chattanooga, after all, was not Detroit.)

The production is staged in a nagging blackout format that seems to hamstring director Lorinne Vozoff. Sound design (fireside chats from F.D.R. and music of the period) is evocative, but the set, featuring outsized wartime posters, is clunky.

Stereotypes abound: a Jewish woman (Carol Pearlman), a redneck (Nina Giovannitti), and a German immigrant who suffers from discrimination (Joyce E. Green, whose Deutsch accent sounds as grating as it must have to the nabobs at the time--an unintended touch perhaps but an awfully effective one).

Performances are at 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., Thursday s through Sundays, 8 p.m., until June 5. Tickets: $10-12. (213) 466-1767.

‘Today’s Special

It’s tough to perform to a small house (last Sunday’s matinee totaled five people, same number as the cast), but it’s tougher still to endure such a vile doomsday comedy as “Today’s Special or Bombs on the 1/2 Shell.”

In Stephen Levi’s dark lunchroom satire at the Pasadena Theater Company, four elderly men and a youth with a headset go about their business as we hear reports about worldwide nuclear disaster. Finally, the missiles rain down on them, too.

Michael Potter directed Wally Campo, Stuart Lancaster, Fredric Gavlin, Ray Galvin and Brian McCarthy, the latter a youth with a headset who excitedly relays the destruction of Moscow, New York, Poland, Oklahoma City, etc., like scores in a ballgame.

This is a two-act play. The only smart thing about it is that they bolt the door to latecomers. What’s happened to American National Theater & Academy West that it could stage such a bomb?

Performances are at 1406 N. Lake Ave., tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m., ending Sunday, 2 p.m. Tickets: $5-$8. (818) 797-6384, (213) 466-1767.