STAGE REVIEW : A Triumph of a ‘Tragedy’

There are no new stories, but there are new ways to tell stories. These come along when we are ready for them. But we don’t know we’re ready for them until they come along.

See Ron Link’s production of Bill Cain’s “Stand-Up Tragedy” at the Taper, for example, and notice what an expert you have become, after years of watching TV, at processing dramatic information. At times it’s like watching a play on fast-forward. Yet the message doesn’t get garbled.

It is not a message play, but it is a thoughtful one. The scene is a Catholic boys’ school on a bombed-out block on New York’s Lower East Side, well suggested by Yael Pardess’ set. Playwright Cain once taught in such a school, and can probably remember the days when he charged into class every morning determined to “turn these kids around” by “challenging” them.

That’s the mind-set of his hero (Jack Coleman) at the top of the play. But, of course, he’s the one who gets challenged. Will he quit and go to law school, or stick with his kids?

From “The Blackboard Jungle” to “To Sir With Love,” we’ve had many such stories. This one ends on a grimmer note than usual, which leads you to trust it as a script. Still, the territory is so familiar that it might not hold you as a Movie of the Week.

But at the Taper you are in the story. It’s as if you had been corraled to referee a pickup basketball game on a school playground. (Basketball is the basic devotion at Nativity Mission School.) You’ve got to get mixed up in the action. You’ve got to care.

First produced this spring at Taper, Too, “Stand-Up Tragedy” grabs whatever is handy to show us what is eating at these volatile kids and their hard-pressed teachers. And their families, too, back in those cockroach-ridden apartments. The cast is all-male, but one of the most vivid characters is a welfare mother who just wants to dance, dance, dance.

How do they work that? Holograms? “Too slow, man,” Cain’s muse must have told him. “Just have her speak through her kid. They’ll get it.”

So we do. Drama is about voices, right? Why limit one actor to one voice? Alternately, if a line needs underlining, why not have everybody in the scene say it?

“Stand-Up Tragedy” is strong on slam dunks and high-fives, as suits a play about high-school males. (The sidewalk choreography is a credit to its inventor, a guy with the wonderful name of Shabba-Doo.) But the real excitement is to watch the characters flip from one actor to another, in the heat of the moment.

The device isn’t overdone. Character A is generally played by Actor A. Vaughn Armstrong is usually the hard-nosed priest who runs the school. Michael DeLorenzo is usually the pre-schizophrenic kid with the thing about superheroes. Dan Gerrity is usually the haughty teacher whom the kids surprisingly like.

But at moments of high stress--and it’s always emergency time at Nativity--the lineup might change. A character might decide that another actor could tell his story better just now, and will take his business there.

This makes for dynamite theater, always a jump ahead of us, and yet in view. What a kick after the kind of play where we know exactly what’s going to happen after about five minutes, and spend the rest of the evening watching it happen.

Yet “Stand-Up Tragedy” isn’t exclusively concerned with delivering a maximum flow of images at a minimum rate of time. When young DeLorenzo “becomes” his mother or his drug addict brother, or both at once, it’s a signal that he’s carrying them around with him--that he can’t get rid of them.

It’s the play’s basic question: Are you your brother’s keeper, when he’s dragging you down? Coleman, our hip teacher, must face it, too, with unforeseen circumstances. Another theme is “the ecology of evil,” not something for nice white teachers from the suburbs to mess with, as Coleman’s principal points out. Holding the lid on these kids may be the best anyone can do.

For a show that moves this quickly, “Stand-up Tragedy” allows time for reflection--and a sense that no play can wrap up the problems of a big-city school in one neat package. The best one can hope for is a play that doesn’t cheat on the problems, and this one doesn’t. “I wanted to give you something beautiful,” young DeLorenzo calmly tells Coleman--”and then take it away from you.” The ecology of evil.

Plays Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7:30 p.m. (no performance June 18.) Matinees Saturdays-Sundays at 2:30 (at 1:30 on June 14.) Closes June 25. 135 N. Grand Ave. Information: (213) 972-7211. Tickets: (213) 410-1062.