Desert-Bound ‘Arroyo Repo,’ ‘Palmdale’ at N.O.T.E.

Two desert-bound one-acts make up the newest offering from Theatre of N.O.T.E.: Grubb Graebner’s “Arroyo Repo” and Cheryl Slean’s “Palmdale,” opening Wednesday at Friends and Artists Theatre in Hollywood.

“ ‘Palmdale’ is about a young woman accepting her own power, leaving her mother and the memory of her father behind,” said Theatre of N.O.T.E. (New One-act Theatre Ensemble) artistic director Joseph Megel of the five-character piece. “Acey, who reads palms, wants to run away to Palmdale, live with a crazy aunt and be independent. The story is about needing the strength to escape.”

He describes Graebner’s Albuquerque-set, three-character “Arroyo Repo” as “a comedy about sad people living on the edge.”

In it, we meet Grisly and Rave, a pair of would-be entrepreneurs now taken to “repossessing” items from a nearby arroyo--a big drainage ditch. “One day, they fish out a woman social worker who’s trying to commit suicide. It’s a story about repossession, feeling helpless. These people are all looking for something, trying to control their environment. At the end, you feel they’ve taken a small step towards doing that.”

Marianne Simon directs “Palmdale,” Bob Kipp “Arroyo Repo.”

THEATER FILE: The Back Alley Theatre’s annual Doodle Auction returns next Sunday, with more than 175 celebrity scribbles open for bidding. This year’s contributors include Edward Albee, Lauren Bacall, Jeff Bridges, Carol Burnett, Chris Evert, Harrison Ford, Jodie Foster, Athol Fugard, John Lithgow, Norman Mailer, LeRoy Neiman, Yoko Ono, Oscar Peterson, Lou Diamond Phillips, Garry Trudeau, Tom Selleck, Brooke Shields and Neil Simon. The $50-per-person reception/auction will be held at a private home in Sherman Oaks. Information: (818) 780-2240.

Courteney Cox, Ed Winter and Michael Spound will star in a revival of Jean Kerr’s “King of Hearts,” opening Sept. 15 at the Tiffany Theatre. . . . Kay Boyle, a member of Paris’ expatriate literary circle in the ‘20s and ‘30s, will read from her collected works Sept. 11 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, kicking off LATC’s fifth annual Poetry/Literary Series. Upcoming participants include Carlos Fuentes, June Jordan, Bella Akhmadulina, Henry Taylor, James Ragan, Carolyn Forche, Larry Heinemann and Robert Creeley.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Christopher Durang’s semi-autobiographical account of his parents’ troubled union, “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” plays through Oct. 8 at Los Angeles Theatre Center downtown. Dennis Erdman directs.

In The Times, Dan Sullivan found Durang’s emotional purging “a very healthy impulse and a painfully funny play. As in O’Neill’s tragedy, we get the sense of a family as a nest of lonely people dedicated to making each other miserable. But here, for some reason, it’s the stuff of laughter.”

Said the Herald Examiner’s Charles Marowitz: “Despite its rambunctious style, the play’s implications remain soberingly harsh. Life is an unfortunate transaction between high expectations and small returns. . . . Erdman’s production is fluent and unfussy but short on comic inspiration.”

From the Orange County Register’s Thomas O’Connor: “The lack of distance turns (Durang’s) black comedy bitter, even mawkish. Instead of lightning, mordant jabs, he throws the book at this family. Even an exemplary cast of comics . . . can’t keep us from feeling like ghoulish freeway onlookers.”

Noted the Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt: “What keeps Durang’s play from achieving comic greatness is much the same thing that kept his family from achieving happiness: the staunch changelessness of each personality. There is no development or growth, no getting to the bottom of anything.”

In the L.A. Reader, Alison Sloane wrote: “Beware of the innocent storybook title. . . . This unsettling dark comedy paints a brutal caricature of a misdirected marriage fraught with chaos and attrition. The humor springs directly from the characters’ turmoil, and, while the laughter is plentiful, it’s far from comfortable.”