Two One-Acts at Powerhouse; Ansky’s ‘The Dybbuk’ at Actors’ Alley; ‘If They Come Back’ at Inner City; ‘The Perfect Party’ at Basehart

Theater--like newspapers--can jump on a timely story faster than you can say op-ed. Take “Killing Miss America,” the second of two one-acts (the first is “The Method to Murder”) by a group called Rough Theatre. Less than 24 hours after the Miss America contest, Jennie Webb and Brent Morris’ piece opened at the Powerhouse last Sunday. Talk about meeting a deadline.

Actually, “Killing Miss America” had taken a bit longer to write than that, but what timing. It seems to have been inspired not by the national contest but by the Miss California version this year, in which Michelle Anderson infiltrated the competition as Miss Santa Cruz and then staged a protest when the winner was crowned.

A variation on this happens in the play, which has Miss Idaho winning, but getting abducted by a former TV news anchorwoman (Webb) and her accomplice and contestant mole, Miss Idaho (Jill Johnson).

The characters’ names tell you everything about the play’s tone: Miss Idaho is Bonnie Sue Babbler, while the anchorwoman is Joan Armstrong. It starts on the silly side, then slips into the ridiculous: The satire on TV types is run into the ground, and Johnson’s mole supposedly ends up in a rubber room. Despite these miscues, the satire by Webb and Brent Morris (who also directed) is genuine, riddled with wicked wit and supported by Colleen Morris’ disarmingly convincing portrait of Miss America as a naive whose mind has been turned to mush by a life of beauty contest triumphs.

Eric Diamond’s “Method to Murder” tries to make some points about how actors can take their Method (the one by Lee Strasberg) too far. Instead, it only confirms that plot gimmicks are a playwright’s worst enemy. Diamond feels like an actor in a nightmare, but fellow actors David Dionisio and Richard Steen feel as if they’re sleepwalking through their roles.

‘The Dybbuk’

Many Jews, especially devout ones, might think that a half-hearted production of S. Ansky’s “The Dybbuk” is best not done, especially during High Holy Days. Then again, any version of this rarely staged play is perhaps better than none at all. But any response to “The Dybbuk,” well done or no, may be influenced by one’s cultural/religious origins.

For this non-Jewish critic, Bette Ferber’s production at Actors’ Alley never makes up its mind on an approach to Ansky’s mystified, romantic tale. A plodding first act is all setup: Channon, a devout young man in love with Sender’s daughter Leah (Scott Sherman and Carol Keis, respectively), is spurned by the family and dies. True love knows no bounds, however; Channon’s ghost, in the form of a dybbuk, takes possession of Leah’s body.

Act II’s pitting of a rabbinical council against the dybbuk is more compelling, and is a fine telling of Hebraic justice. But Ferber’s cast (an odd mixture of Jews and Gentiles) is simply not up to the task, so that the spiritual climax carries no transcendent urgency. If a staging of “The Dybbuk” doesn’t exude mysticism, why do it?

‘If They Come Back’

Some plays should be books. The scope and emotional potential of Eric Monte’s “If They Come Back” threatens to burst the theatrical seams at the Inner City Cultural Center--at least under Monte’s direction.

Any play following a black family’s course from civil rights struggles in the South of the ‘50s to Watts in the ‘60s is going to have to cut corners in a way a novel needn’t. Monte the writer has written an ambitious play that exceeds the abilities of Monte the director.

The play’s dramatic value is undercut when his good brother/bad brother conflict isn’t developed soon enough for us to be drawn into the fate of Monte’s beleaguered family (Joe May and Gregory Travis lend emotional weight, though). The tendency for hand-wringing monologues is no help either. By the time Travis is dealing drugs in Watts and May comes to help him out, it seems like too little, too late.

The play’s historical value is more interesting, especially the depiction of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) meetings which saw the first organizing efforts among blacks and whites since the days of the Freedom Riders.

‘The Perfect Party’

For a playwright who has proven time and again that he has worthy ideas worth putting on a stage, A. R. Gurney has produced a vaporous piece of pretension with his 1986 comedy, “The Perfect Party,” in its Los Angeles premiere at the Richard Basehart Theatre.

We’re to believe that a college professor has suddenly retired in order to throw the perfect party (David Doyle). What is the perfect party? Well, Gurney consumes the first hour-plus having the professor explicating it to his wife (Patricia Barry), his next-door neighbors (Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall) and the New York critic who has come to review it for the papers.

The party is the professor’s vision of bringing America together, and when it’s something less than a smash, it’s seen as a portent of national collapse. Despite the thin-blooded comedy--not terribly strengthened by director Philip Minor’s cast--Gurney appears to be serious about his strained metaphor. Say it isn’t so, A.R.