STAGE REVIEW : ‘Make Noise Quietly’ Speaks Volumes in Its Own Quiet Way

The title of the new show at the Taper, Too is accurate and deceptive. True, “Making Noise Quietly,” a collection of three one-acts, is quiet in the way that it creeps up on you. But it can also be a bombshell.

Written by British playwright Robert Holman (new and welcome to Los Angeles), the vignettes are masterful studies in understatement, less notable for breaking new ground than for tackling old ground in new ways. Holman’s is a highly distinctive voice that leaves you wanting to hear more. And for proper calibration, he could hardly have asked for a better company or director.

The first two sketches (Holman is nothing if not a superb sketch artist) are almost breathless and blissfully unfinished. “Being Friends” and “Lost” seem deliberately to stop--if not in mid-sentence, surely in mid-action. In each case, the premise is simple but its potential ramifications complex. Holman virtually specializes in showing how violent world events reach deep into our psyches to affect the smallest personal, diurnal details of our lives.

“Being Friends” is the chance encounter of two young men in a field in Kent, England, in 1944. One is a Quaker and a conscientious objector (Daniel J. O’Connor), working on a nearby farm. The intruder, who arrives on a bicycle and offers to share his lunch, is a young homosexual writer and artist (Robert Petkoff) with a joyous sensibility and a gift of gab. Seemingly casual conversation turns to deeper philosophical stances and semi-confessionals when a nearby village is bombed by the Germans. The playlet ends with the suggestion that all kinds of possibilities exist beyond the eventuality of an afternoon swim.

Again with “Lost,” actual events fool you. A young midshipman (Evan MacKenzie) arrives at the lower-middle-class home of May Appleton. He brings news of the death of her son Ian, killed in the Falklands War. But May’s reaction to the news (a beautifully anguished, tender yet stern performance by Jeanne Hepple) and the unpremeditated revelations of May and the young officer are not at all what we’d expect. The subsequent rapprochement between these two strangers humanizes them both.

As usual, it is the longer piece, the one that follows the intermission, that is the most affecting. In “Making Noise Quietly,” which gives its name to the evening, we witness three prisoners of different kinds of abuse interacting in a struggle to break free.

It’s a curious equation indeed that unravels in a quiet patch of the Black Forest in 1986. We have a wealthy German Jewish dowager (Elizabeth Hoffman) on a painting vacation, a troubled quasi-autistic child, Sam, who has chanced upon her at her easel, and the boy’s violent stepfather (Alan Tadd).

The boy (a haunting, unself-conscious performance by Chris Demetral) has taken a shine to the woman, though you couldn’t call it friendliness, which is not part of his makeup. Sam behaves more like a trapped animal--a wild, trembling, kicking thing--a pattern at once opposed and exacerbated by his conflicted stepfather.

We must not divulge more, but nothing is quite as it seems among these three, and the fascination is watching them take turns stalking and taunting, attacking and cajoling one another in a manner that defies logic yet seems perfectly reasonable. What qualified psychiatrists might make of this piece is anyone’s guess, but odd as it is, improbable as it is, this three-way collision of wise and tortured human souls rings true.

Dennis Erdman directed all three plays, simplifying his task by casting them with close-to-ideal actors. Erdman has respected the author’s insistence on the quality of quiet that permeates these exchanges.

With the help of designers John Iacovelli (simple, suggestive sets), Paulie Jenkins (lighting), Marianna Elliott (costumes), Stephen Shaffer (sound) and some effective incidental music adapted and performed by Terry Harrington, he has put together a paradoxically dis quieting evening at once troubling and enchanting.

At 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2:30. Ends March 5. Tickets: $15; (213) 972-7204.