What’s Staged and Read All Over? LATC

Get ready for another “Big Weekend,” as the Los Angeles Theatre Center unveils its annual festival of new plays and staged readings Thursday through next Sunday. In addition to performances of its current shows--”Demon Wine,” “A Burning Beach” and “Three Ways Home”--a NewWorks Project will feature readings of Marlane Meyer’s “The Geography of Luck,” Neal Bell’s “Ready for the River,” Cherrie Moraga’s “Shadow of a Man” and Edward and Mildred Lewis’ “Spring Street,” a contemporary adaptation of Gorky’s “Lower Depths.”

The Center’s seven professional training labs will also be in evidence, presenting the best work developed in their groups over the past year; included are the Playwright’s Unit, the Music Theatre Lab, the Women’s Project, the Asian-American Theatre Project, the Black Theatre Artist’s Workshop, the Latino Theatre Lab and the Young Playwright’s Lab. On Saturday, a symposium, “State of the Art: Theatre in the 21st Century,” will take place in Theatre 3.

Information: (213) 627-6500, Ext. 271.

SIGNING ON: A different kind of storytelling comes to town in “Flying Words Project,” opening Friday at Friends and Artists Theatre.

“What we do is a performance art piece; it’s like watching a play and a movie at the same time,” said Kenny Lerner, who provides the “voice” for deaf poet-performer Peter Cook. “It’s a play in that it’s live theater. But it’s a movie in that, using sign language, you can go anywhere in a split second. You can go to the moon or a cave, move in space and time, go in slow motion, do close-ups, far-away shots or pan over a scene--and Peter will make you see it.”

To give one a visual sense of the possibilities, he said, “Hold your hands up on each side of your head. Wiggle your fingers. Your hands are trees now. Put the trees behind your ears and you can set up a kind of rhythm. Then you’re moving through the woods. You can use your body to be a person or an animal. You can become part of the environment, or cut to something that’s going on in the brush. . . .”

Lerner, who hooked up with Cook four years ago, when he was teaching at a deaf college in New York and Cook was performing solo, describes his part as “the connection for the hearing audience. I’m the background, the vocals, the sound track. Sometimes I narrate, sometimes I’m silent. I try to talk as little as possible, let people see what’s happening by themselves. Sign language is like poetry--and we try to express it on as many levels as we can.”

CRITICAL CROSS FIRE: Rupert Holmes’ mystery joy ride “Accomplice” recently premiered at the Pasadena Playhouse, with Art Wolff directing Pamela Brull, Michael McKean, Natalia Nogulich and Harry Shearer. Without giving away any significant clues, here’s what the local press had to say.

From Dan Sullivan in The Times: “Up until its final scene, ‘Accomplice’ is the wittiest, most accomplished fooler since ‘Deathtrap.’ The last scene is false, but tolerant audiences will go along with it. . . . If Holmes is gunning for a classic, though, he’ll either have to improve that scene or take it out.”

Others agreed. Said Kathleen O’Steen in Daily Variety: “What starts out as a classical thriller that properly twists and deviates its way through a handsomely staged first act is ultimately undone by a wild and unbelievable array of twists that unfold in Act II.”

In the L.A. Reader, Ken Blais found “enough plot twists to confuse even the most clever sleuth. But thanks to a major thematic shift late in the second act, our attempt to sort out the plot becomes a gratuitous exercise. Nevertheless, the ensemble acting is first-rate.”

Said the Daily News’ Tom Jacobs: “The fun of this kind of play lies in watching the plot twist and turn, trying to anticipate the next reversal and being delighted when you’re caught off guard. This reviewer was delighted quite often, thank you. Fair to say, he was also disappointed from time to time.”

Noted Steven Mikulan in the L.A. Weekly: “Holmes has set out to not only poke fun at this genre convention, but to create a parody that is constantly self-deconstructing well beyond the point of absurdity. It is a clever and fun attempt that runs on a bit too far past the point when it should end.”

And from Richard Stayton in the Herald Examiner: “Holmes never stoops to the camp excesses of Neil Simon’s ‘Murder by Death.’ This is a series of shrewd mental pratfalls, aided immensely by designer David Jenkins’ idiomatic English cottage, Kathleen Detoro’s droll costumes, Martin Aronstein’s telling lights and Jon Gottlieb’s provocative sound effects.”