‘Dinner’ at Pacific; ‘Standard’ at Attic; ‘Ground Level’ at Shepard; ‘Sterling’ at Actors Alley Too; ‘Attraction’ at Ebony Showcase Annex

The closest thing to a New England, Currier and Ives Christmas that you are likely to find in L.A. is the Pacific Theatre Ensemble’s production of Thornton Wilder’s “The Long Christmas Dinner.”

The production is stark and lean, but the play’s wistful resonances and decorative ambiance make the experience a Christmas dessert.

You’re greeted out front by carols sung by the cast, bundled up in their Victorian coats and dresses. Once inside, seated in the wooden, church-like pews, you warm to the treat of mulled wine and cider and more caroling, which segues into the play itself.

As in Wilder’s “Our Town,” this play cleverly manipulates time. We watch characters from one family, as in time-lapse photography, celebrating Christmas dinner over the course of 90 years. Children become adults and then crones as members of the seven-member cast materialize as animated figures in an album with ensemble panache.

And all this happens in a one-act that runs only a little more than an hour. The ensemble did the same show last year with some of the same cast, and artistic director Stephanie Shroyer has reconstructed the evening from D. Paul Yeuell’s original staging.

That staging unfolds with pristine focus. Even the squabbles--for this is a real, not always cheery, family--convey a poignancy. The production is vintage Wilder, the ritual of Christmas dinner (the food imaginary) lovingly recycled through an epoch of family births, deaths and rebirths.

Not much seems to happen, but that’s a deceptive tribute to the discipline of the cast (Sarah Hill, Vince Melocchi, Carla Obert, Sarah Zinsser, Michael Tulin, Deborah Scott and James Schultz).

At 705 1/2 Venice Blvd., Venice, Wednesday through Sunday, 8 p.m., through Dec. 23; matinees Saturdays and this Sunday, 5 p.m. Tickets: $13 (a dollar off with a canned food donation). (213) 660-3643.

‘Standard of Living’

When Keith Reddin’s Cold-War comedy, “Highest Standard of Living,” premiered three years ago, the East-West paranoia in the play seemed timely enough. But glasnost and other events have quaintly dated it.

Some of the characters are still funny, but the production at the Attic Theatre is ragged and unpolished. The set design, for example, is basically a clutter of furniture moved around between scenes. In Mitch Beer’s staging, too many of the characters and scenes play like schematic, isolated acts.

Kevin Joseph Klein is charming in the lead role of a graduate student in Russia hurtled into paranoia when he’s caught in KGB-CIA cross fire. He’s strongly supported by Eden Bodnar’s Soviet defector who follows him back to the United States (her Russian accent is perfectly pitched).

For bravado and as an actor to watch, Don Bernhardt is hilarious as a Moscow street huckster in an aloha shirt, trying to hustle up a pair of jeans. Bernhardt doubles as a slick CIA lackey trying to sell out our reluctant hero, in the play’s strongest scene. But Reddin’s plot grows numbing and the second act seems to run forever.

At 6562 1/2 Santa Monica Blvd., tonight through Sunday, 8 p.m. Tickets: $12 ; (213) 462-9720.

‘At Ground Level’

The story of a spirited family in Costa Rica breaking through barriers of poverty and illiteracy, “At Ground Level (Home Sweet Home in Costa Rica)” is advocacy theater. But it’s interesting for the historic and contemporary light it sheds on Central America.

A grueling first act grinds the production down, but the thematic trajectory of the second act redeems much of the play at the Richmond Shepard. The play’s 85-year-old Costa Rican playwright, Luisa Gonzalez, dramatizes her own real-life story as a young, naive woman radicalized while living in a San Jose slum in the 1920s.

This KPFK-sponsored first English language production (translated by Regina Pustan) features a rousing performance by BJ Theus as an ignorant shoemaker uncle who teaches himself to read and becomes a Leninist. Kate Romero delivers a modulated performance as his young niece, galvanized into fury when she loses a teaching job for joining a demonstration.

Director Patric Z’s seven-member cast is uneven (the mother wailing over an ironing board is never convincing), and the show could use more Latino actors. Quicker acceleration also would help. But the family’s grit is enviable, and Kathy Crawford’s spitfire prostitute enlivens the action.

At 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m., ends Sunday, 7 p.m. Tickets: $10; (213) 452-3950.

‘Purloined Sterling’

The re-creation of a 1940s radio mystery drama is the singular beguiling element in Anita Merzell’s spoof, “The Case of the Purloined Sterling,” at Actors Alley Too.

The radio program’s sound effects, with droll Mark Chaet unfurling cheese graters, garlic pressers and the like, is rich stuff. Playwright/director Anita Merzell, doubling as a radio actress playing hard-boiled detective Shayna Goldberg, is also fun--for awhile.

But this show stays on the air way past its time. You tire of the convoluted radio plot read into mikes by the actors (including Dana Kelly and the overripe Gene Marks), because there’s no reason to listen to it. The premise is cleverly executed, but there’s no characterization or plot development outside the deliberately dumb show within the show.

Though the production can’t sustain two acts, Chaet is terrific. And the creamy ‘40s-styled radio vocalist (the delicious Lari Tucker) is almost worth the admission.

At 4334 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks, reopening Jan. 8 and running Mondays through Wednesdays, through Jan. 24. Free; donations. (818) 986-2278.

‘Attraction Fatal’

L.A. theater veterans Nick and Edna Stewart are a testament to endurance. They opened their Ebony Showcase in 1950.

The Stewarts don’t produce much anymore, and maybe they should. The rental production in the Ebony Showcase Annex, writer-director Jerry Jones’ “Attraction Fatal,” about a murdered rock star, is inept, to put it softly.

The show lurches between being a courtroom drama and a lounge act. The murder plot stops for singer Harold Burr and comic Cliff Howard to perform their acts. Talented as they are, their work belongs in a variety show.

The comedy-drama, though, has its share of smiles and laughs whenever the zaftig and adventurous Vay Gainer takes the witness stand. The 13-member cast deserves better.

At 4708 Washington Blvd., Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. indefinitely. Tickets: $15 - $17.50 ; (213) 936-1107.