Revival of ‘Dream Girl’ at Room for Theatre; ‘In the Bargain’ at Harman Avenue; ‘Relay’ at Main Stage; ‘Nobody Likes Ugly’ at Flight

When “Dream Girl” appeared on Broadway in 1945, it was an atypically fluffy comedy for its author, Elmer Rice of “The Adding Machine” and “Street Scene” fame. It was also a vehicle for his wife, actress Betty Field.

It’s still a star vehicle more than anything else, and Susan Scannell, the star of Room for Theatre’s revival, keeps us smiling as she steers through the fluff and the final improbability of the play.

Scannell plays cheerfully neurotic Georgina, a partner in a failing bookstore, who can’t stop daydreaming. The play takes her through one long and important day in her 24th year, with plenty of pit stops for acted-out versions of her fantasies.

Georgina thinks she loves her sister’s sensitive husband (Lee Magnuson), and she thinks she loathes the hard-boiled reporter (Matt McKenzie) who tries to sell her review copies of recent books. Naturally, the truth is the opposite of what she thinks.

The play starts slowly and ends in a precipitous rush. But there is much amusement along the way, with tart performances turned in by McKenzie, Peg Shirley and Susan Mackin and a sweet one offered by John Bluto, under the direction of Alan Bergmann.

Scannell is endearingly garrulous, and she also gets laughs between the lines, as when she fervently chews her soup during an anxious dinner conversation. At one point Sunday, she came down with the giggles--and it looked like she might break out of character. But in fact, the giggles weren’t out of place at that point. Likewise, did she intend for her slip to peer out from under the hem of her dress during the first act? Whatever the intent, it worked as a sign of what was going on inside Georgina.

Diana Eden’s costumes are up to the theater’s high standards; the hats and a couple of the fantasy get-ups are especially notable.

Performances are at 12745 Ventura Blvd., Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 4:30 p.m., through June 26, with special senior matinees at 12:30 p.m. on June 5 and 12. Tickets: $12.50-$15; (818) 509-0459.

‘In the Bargain’

Lately I’ve seen two plays about trios of women running garage sales. Is this some exotic new genre?

It’s more exotic in Greg Suddeth’s “In the Bargain,” at Harman Avenue Theater, than it was in “Reduced for Quick Sale,” at West Coast Ensemble. In Suddeth’s play, one of the women is married to a Mafia informer who is now protected by a federal marshal . . . or at least they think he is protected.

The melodrama doesn’t always make sense--why do the witness and his wife return so soon after making their grand exit? It also seems somewhat gratuitous. Suddeth might respond that the Mafia elements amplify the subject of taking risks--which he addresses on a smaller scale, elsewhere in the play. Regardless, they spice up an otherwise quiet little play.

Marc Bennett’s stucco house and his assemblage of merchandise are remarkably accurate. The best performances are those of James Arone, Elizabeth Savage and Catherine Keener. Paul Ben-Victor’s John Malkovich impersonation is vivid, but his first-act mugging is excessive, considering what we later learn about his character. As the marshal, Robert Sampson made the last line of the first act unintelligible.

Performances are at 522 N. La Brea Ave., Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7:30 p.m., through June 5. Tickets: $10-$12; (213) 466-1767.

‘Relay’

Bart Baker’s “Relay,” at the Main Stage, recalls “That Championship Season”--only this time, the coach isn’t around to help these athletes remember their glory days, for he died shortly before the trophies were won. In fact, the four members of this college swim team believe that one of them killed him.

In flashbacks, we learn that the coach had threatened to report the team for drug use and that this was enough to engender talk of murder among these winning-obsessed young men.

It seems farfetched. The coach himself doesn’t show up in the flashbacks, nor does Baker sufficiently spell out his prior relationships with his team members, so it’s hard to fathom that they would bear such an animus toward him as to consider murder.

His absence also lessens the dramatic tension. The clash of wills is subordinated to a rather routine whodunit, dressed up with pungent dialogue.

The portraits of the team members are, for the most part, cliches. They include a gay doctor (Phil Brock), a cynical novelist (Adrian Zmed), a movie star (Jeff Kaake) and a man whose youthful marriage has just crumbled (Billy Warlock). All of this has been accomplished within seven years of college graduation.

Zmed and Brock are the best-spoken of the actors; the others have occasional projection problems. Wally Kurth directed, and Eric Allaman contributed a foreboding musical score.

Performances are at 12136 Riverside Drive, North Hollywood, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., through June 26. Tickets: $10-$12.50; (213) 466-1767.

‘Nobody Likes Ugly’

On paper, “Nobody Likes Ugly” looks like hot stuff. A young black man (Craig Thomas), chafing under the matriarchal nagging of his grandmother (Frankie Albright) and mother (Rosa Hill), learns his mother has a very shady past. The young man flees into the arms of an older, wanton woman (Lorrie Marlow). Meanwhile, we see a mysterious male Stranger (Garon Grigsby) seducing nearly all of the other characters, male or female.

Ooh-la-la?

There are some pictorially erotic moments in Lorenzo Buford’s play, at the Flight. But they seem distanced by the brooding pacing of Stanley Bennett Clay’s staging, and even more so by the lulling sounds of Clay’s score and the dark lighting design of Leroy Meadows. And if this play isn’t consistently erotic, it isn’t much of anything; expect no sharp revelations about the impact of matriarchy or sexual repression or anything else.

Performances are at 6472 Santa Monica Blvd., Fridays through Sundays at 8 p.m., through June 19. Tickets: $15; (213) 480-3232.