‘Darling of Family’ at Theatre Rapport; ‘Death Defying Acts’ at Gypsy; ‘Brando Sat Here’ at Actors Forum; ‘Rocket to Moon’ at Main Stage

A woman (Shannon Holt) is in jail for drowning her baby. At the courthouse, she’s visited by a hustling public defender (Matthew Dunn), a distraught husband (Marc Brandes), a court-appointed psychiatrist (Bo Sabato) and her reprimanding mother (Lila Waters).

That’s the story of James Metropole’s “The Darling of the Family,” at Theatre Rapport. The actors make more of the story than the writer did.

Metropole wants to suggest the essential mystery behind such horrible deeds--and his spare, naturalistic style does that during much of the play. Yet by letting the psychiatrist argue persuasively that the problem was postpartum psychosis, shortly after his patient explains that she thought her baby was the devil, the play takes on a clinical air.

We begin to feel that if only the woman had seen the right psychiatrist, her child would be alive today. While this may have been true, it’s not as dramatic as the play would have been without this all-too-easy explanation.

The sequence of visitors also seems slightly askew. The play ought to climax with the woman’s reconstruction of the grisly incident, during the psychiatrist’s visit, but instead it then goes on to examine the relationship between the woman and her own mother.

Throughout, Holt is harrowing indeed as the wound-up prisoner. Her bewilderment at how she wandered into this nightmare is quite affecting. It’s the sort of mad-woman role of which actresses dream. The other members of Metropole’s cast don’t let Holt down. Brandes is particularly notable, alternating between muddled withdrawal and bull-headed rage.

At 1277 N. Wilton Place, Sundays and Mondays at 8 p.m., through October. Tickets: $10; (213) 969-4795. ‘Death Defying Acts’

Karin (M’lisa MacLaren) wants to become a hospice volunteer--right now. Yes, the orientation started five weeks ago, but she’s a quick study, she claims.

What’s the rush? No, she isn’t dying. But we don’t find out her real reason until near the end of Doug Haverty’s “Death Defying Acts,” at the Gypsy Playhouse.

It’s explained through the use of a fairly intriguing theatrical conceit that shouldn’t be revealed in a review. The device shifts the focus of the play slightly from the way we face death to the way we face our parents. But in this play, the two issues are not unrelated.

Unfortunately, Jean Sarah Frost’s staging dissipates much of the play’s energy before we figure out what’s going on. Long blackouts between scenes, accompanied by sometimes inappropriate music, slow down the play. MacLaren captures the character’s fussy and frenetic side, but not much of anything else.

Also, Haverty devotes too much time to the hospice supervisor (Richard K. Weber) and perhaps not enough time to the aftermath of his final revelation. In support, Laura James brings her dying character to vivid life, and Charles Coplin and Stuart Lancaster contribute sturdy work.

At 3321 W. Olive Ave., Burbank, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., through Aug. 14. Tickets: $10; (818) 954-9858. ‘Marlon Brando Sat Right Here’

The set design and Shawn Michaels’ actors establish a gritty panorama of hopelessness in Hoboken, N.J., circa 1955, in the opening minutes of “Marlon Brando Sat Right Here,” at Actors Forum.

We’re in a greasy spoon diner on the morning of a longshoremen’s strike. Violence is literally around the corner, and most of the natives are restless. The diner, looking like an Edward Hopper painting, was supposedly used as a location in the shooting of “On the Waterfront,” an event that inspired some of its younger habitues to try to climb out of Hoboken.

Having established the atmosphere, though, writer Louis LaRusso II doesn’t know where to take the play. The violence that does erupt is over a petty debt; the strike is hardly mentioned as the play goes on. And soon, it becomes apparent that LaRusso’s primary concern is a long-postponed romance between a waitress (Audrey Marlyn) and her neighbor (Bob Giovane) across the way.

This romance doesn’t ring true. It isn’t justified in LaRusso’s dialogue, and the principals have no chemistry. (Giovane’s uncertain delivery is no help.) Nor does it seem particularly relevant to LaRusso’s larger themes, which he spells out all too specifically. (“I came out of my mother’s belly with nothin,’ and I still got nothin’.”)

LaRusso’s insistence that the waitress utter a new malapropism with every other sentence also betrays a confusion of goals in this play (which was on Broadway for six weeks in 1980).

At 3365 1/2 Cahuenga Blvd. W est , Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., through Aug. 28. Tickets: $10; (213) 466-1767.

‘Rocket to the Moon’

Two-and-a-half hours in a dentist’s office is no one’s idea of a good time. But at least you can hope to read a couple of interesting magazine articles.

The Main Stage Theater production of Clifford Odets’ “Rocket to the Moon,” set in a Depression-era dentist’s office and lasting, yes, more than 2 1/2 hours (minus intermission), doesn’t offer even that. At least the anesthesia is working; watching this pallid dentist (Thomas Oglesby) conduct an affair with his ditzy receptionist (Jill Jacobson), who’s also being wooed by his father-in-law (Len Lesser) while the dentist’s wife (Brandis Kemp) frowns and grimaces from the sidelines, is numbing rather than painful.

There are signs of life in a couple of secondary performances, those of Carl Strano and Leslie Morris. But the four principals play only the most obvious chords. Oglesby in particular has a namby-pamby obliviousness that turns off audience interest and makes the whole affair seem unlikely. Compare this to the 1984 production at Company of Angels, where Greg Mullavey’s nervous intensity kept things humming for at least a couple of hours.

Alan Cooke directed the Main Stage version.

At 12135 Riverside Drive, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. through Aug. 14. Tickets: $12.50; (213) 466-1767.