STAGE REVIEW : Kedric Wolfe Aims High With ‘Flights’

When Kedric Robin Wolfe, tall as a telephone pole, walks on stage at the Odyssey 3 in West Los Angeles, his gaze wanders dreamily over the audience.

“Where did their eyes first meet that day?” he asks as if speaking of lovers. But Wolfe has a very different kind of bond in mind: The hate that a fired employee harbored for the boss who disgraced him over a $69 theft.

And we’re off on “Flights of Fear and Fancy,” an evening of two monologues. The first one, “There Was a Horse,” focuses on PSA Flight 1771 on Dec. 7, 1987--a flight that crashed near San Luis Obispo killing all 43 people aboard.

Monologuist Wolfe gives us his own fanciful account of what happened from the moment the aircraft took off to the moment it slammed into the ground scooping out a small crater.

It’s a scenario that we’re each at some liberty to invent since the facts were only partially filled in. We do know that David Burke, the fired airline employee, apparently unloaded six bullets from his .44-caliber Magnum--presumably into his former boss Ray Thomson, the pilot and co-pilot and, perhaps, himself. Wolfe’s script is believable, but what grabs us more than the storyboard, is the compressed rage and hysteria of the momentum he creates around these final minutes of the crash.

Intertwined in this story is another account of shock and fear--that of a wounded soldier in Hitler’s army fleeing a battleground. The connection is at best remote, but the telling is vivid--so vivid, that one benignly overlooks the absence of a real link between the stories.

So much for flights of fear.

Flights of fancy, titled “Let Me Explain,” take up the evening’s second half and are far more internal, organic and fun. Wolfe gives us an amusing account of that living nightmare: unrequited love. Imaginary unrequited love at that.

This sad sack merely lays his hungry eyes on a stranger and is stricken with instant pangs of undying love. The woman, of course, doesn’t know he exists.

We won’t divulge the shenanigans that follow this fulminating non-encounter, but the episode has a lively twist ending and is driven by a clear sense of the tongue in cheek. In a more literal expression of lovesickness, Wolfe performs much of the monologue in a rolling cage. This hell-on-wheels visually accentuates the humor.

Iconoclasm aside, Wolfe is an endearing storyteller, somewhat reminiscent of Spalding Gray, but more naturally bashful. When he speaks it’s almost with implicit apologies. His bald pate, surprised eyes and spindly frame give him a conservatively goofy look, like a stork on one leg. Where Gray’s restraint is more neurotically motivated, Wolfe gives an impression of playful self-mockery. It’s an attitude he seems secretly glad to share with his audience.

These odd combinations make for a slight but pleasant encounter. Scott Kelman was the director. As far as one can see, it was a question of two men sitting around talking: How do we make these two tales coalesce into an evening of theater? Well, they don’t entirely, but neither does it matter. There’s an inherent purity to the event--a kind of Zen simplicity that transcends quirks. This is a man you feel you’d like to get to know better. And when at the curtain he beckons the audience into his cage, you know it would be more refuge than dungeon.

At 12111 Ohio St. , West Los Angeles, Wednesdays through Fridays, 8:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 9:30 p.m.; Sundays 7:30 p.m. with selected Sunday matinees (call theater for dates). No performances Dec. 21-25. Runs indefinitely. Tickets: $13.50-$17.50; (213) 826-1626.