STAGE REVIEWS : ‘Michi’s Blood’ and ‘Freedom Bird’ Look at Lives Entrapped

Theatre/Theater is staging two grim dramas about trapped people: “Michi’s Blood” by West Germany’s Franz Xavar Kroetz and “Freedom Bird” by Alex Kubik.

Both plays take unflinching looks at unpalatable subjects. Neither provides an adequate answer to the questions raised, but Kubik at least made the attempt. We appreciate the effort.

“Freedom Bird” depicts a Pittsburgh man (played by Kubik) who is unable to exorcise his terrible memories of Vietnam. He has confined himself to an upstairs room at his mother’s house for 13 years (the story is set in 1983), with the door to his room nailed shut.

His mother (Ivy Bethune) hands him food through a little “doggy door.” But he won’t allow her into the room, where he wallows in re-enactments of war experiences, sports fantasies and the embraces of an inflatable mannequin.

Meanwhile, a school pal (Bennet Guillory), also a Vietnam veteran, has become the star of a TV series in Hollywood. When the actor returns home for their high school reunion, he manages to breach his chum’s doggy door and tries to extricate him from his solitude.

The essential question of why the two veterans reacted to the war so differently isn’t sufficiently answered. The recluse feels unjustified guilt over another soldier’s death, his mother kowtows too much to sonny-boy’s dependent state, and he remembers his he-man father--now dead--but it doesn’t quite add up. The script also hints that the successful friend may have shunted aside his own memories with too much dispatch.

Kubik speaks to himself and his friend in a raw blend of Vietnam-era profanity; he sometimes sounds more like an actor showing off than like a brooding loner. But he supplements the talk with vigorous body English that keeps the eye engaged. Guillory and Bethune provide strong support.

Ted Post (whose credits include the Vietnam War film “Go Tell the Spartans”) directed on an appropriately sloppy set designed by Brian Savegar, moodily lit by J. Kent Inasy.

At 1713 Cahuenga Blvd., Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., through April 27. $12; (213) 871-0210.

In “Freedom Bird,” the recluse acknowledges that the homeless are even worse off than he is. Look, for example, at the people in “Michi’s Blood,” which has been transplanted from rural Bavaria to an American inner city.

A young couple lives in a tiny one-room hovel (masterfully designed by Bill Eigenbrodt). Their bed is made of cardboard boxes, but somehow they obtained a tiny TV set. The two are sniping as the play opens, and soon we learn the young woman is pregnant. Though she tries to muster some “good will” about her condition, her mate attempts--with so little debate that it almost seems as if a scene is missing--to apply his own homemade remedy, with dire results.

If the man in “Freedom Bird” is too verbose, this couple is almost completely inarticulate; even when they talk, their words often miss the precise mark they’re seeking. Through most of the play (except in one bed-pounding scene) they’re also remarkably numb. The 50-minute sketch is the same.

Writer Kroetz apparently intended to depict this couple at the end of their rope and leave it at that, but the drama would be more powerful if we saw more of the rope. The play comes off as a clinical study of the final symptoms--instead of the disease.

Karen Malina White and Allan Dean Moore look a bit too healthy, even manicured, in these roles. Inasy’s lights and Galen Wade’s sound attempt to add drama. Nelson Handel directed.

At 1713 Cahuenga Blvd., Fridays and Saturdays at 10:30 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m. $10; (213) 650-7225.