Skillful Acting, Direction Save Riehl’s ‘Up Cat Creek’

“Up Cat Creek,” a brawling play about Colorado mountain people, captures attention by the force of its acting and the skill of its direction.

At the Alliance Theatre, it’s a rambling, over-plotted play that succeeds because the production masks the play’s hothouse melodrama. Debuting playwright N. A. Riehl rejects a central plot line for a collection of domestic sub-plots that swirl like tumbleweed. Booze, sex, infidelity, teen lust and murder create a steamy barnyard havoc that’s surprisingly well-modulated by director David Cox.

There’s a crowded drunken party scene, for example, spilling from rundown house to stable to yard on a stage that measures only 20x25 feet, that is a role model of blocking and artful staging.

The show features two alternating casts, and the 10 actors reviewed here, particularly Elizabeth Meads’ weary wife, Laura Becker’s hysterical 15-year-old daughter, and Patrick Warburton’s raucous buck, are as authentic as the weathered saddle gear that populates the gritty set by co-designers Brent Biles and director Cox.

The play is not seamless. With Jeffrey Allen Creed’s lighting pinpointing pools of drama, the production depends on isolated moments for its jolts: for instance, when the cuckolded and irresponsible husband (a convincing Jon Sharp) pleads for his unfaithful wife’s return or when bullets fly in an electrifying scene with a crazed teen-age son (the neurotic Darrel Guilbeau).

Since opening night last month, the production has been wisely trimmed from nearly three hours to a little over two hours.

At 3204 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank, Wednesdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., through June 10. $14. (818) 567-4222.

Playhouse Is the Thing in Revival of O’Neill

The new Stella Adler Theatre is unveiling its first production, Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” The show is a qualified achievement. But the theater, with its tiered seating and hardwood, spacious proscenium stage, is an unqualified success, wedding a small theater to the ambience of a large house.

Director Milton Justice’s production takes a gamble, stretching the day-long saga of the dysfunctional Tyrone family--actually the young O’Neill, his father, mother and older brother--through three intermissions and four acts. That is how O’Neill wrote it, but it takes awfully strong actors to sustain that length and make fierce the repetitive taunts and self-hatred of the characters.

The result here is mixed. A certain flatness of tone prevails. The show is not tough enough. Its strength is Joanne Linville’s fragile, drug-ravaged mother. Linville makes the helpless fury of the woman almost ghost-like, and her faded wedding dress scene is heart-rending.

Brion James misses the miserly father’s heartiness, anger and ragged grandeur. James catches the patriarch’s softness and vulnerability but not the touchiness.

As the self-destructive lush of an older brother, Thor Edgell gathers steam in the alcoholic-hazed last act. Mark Ruffalo’s consumptive younger brother (the O’Neill character) is fine as the morose fledging writer, but he doesn’t suggest a young man who has been to sea and his poetic utterances sound recited. The Irish maid (flavorfully accented Deborah Kym) is off key, too brassy and directed to talk too fast.

But visually this journey is full of moodiness, from designer John Arnone’s shoreline summer home to the foghorns of Leonora Schildkraut’s sound to Brenda Berry’s coppery lighting and Shon LeBlanc and K.C. Kelly’s period costumes.

At 6250 Hollywood Blvd., Thursdays through Sundays, 7 p.m., through June 3. $20. (213) 465-4446.

Macbeth’s Staging Adds Eerie Setting for Horror

Most productions of “Macbeth” gloss over the Scottish imagery. So what better venue to do “Macbeth” than the Celtic Arts Center? We’re not only plunged into Scotland in the year AD 1040, but this horror story is complete with kilts, bagpipes and brogues so thick only a native Scot could understand it all.

That’s a vexing problem, but the design and pace of the show largely make up for the muffled diction. Besides “Macbeth,” only “Othello” enjoys such a ferocious, headlong gallop into tragedy. This concentrated plunge into doom, and the production’s Celtic designs, are distinguishing features.

A one-man band, Zen Mansley, produced, directed, designed, and, impressively plays the title role with requisite physical prowess. Kathleen Marie Shelton’s auburn-haired Lady Macbeth is a touch too elegant. But Scott Niedzwiecki’s Banquo, Tim McGroarty’s Macduff and Bill Zban and Abbe Rowlins’ witches strongly advance this brew of darkness and gloom.

Lady Macbeth’s “Come thick night” becomes a black summons. The sword fights and Macbeth’s decapitated head are bloody, visceral instruments of hell, aptly dramatized in blackouts.

At 5651 Hollywood Blvd., Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., through May 26. $6-$10. (213) 462-6844.

Dr. Glorious’ House Call Revitalizes New-Age Play

New Age spirituality is a ripe subject for satire, and playwright James Metropole’s “Sedona” at Theater Rapport jabs the needle into chic gurus who shop their energy sources in such spiritual oases as Sedona, Ariz.

That’s where the play is set and where New Age followers awaited a Harmonic Convergence in 1987. Metropole renames it “The Day of Universal Concordance,” and the sendup recalls satiric scenes in the movie “Semi-Tough,” in which EST and Rolfing were deflated by Burt Reynolds and company.

Metropole, who directed this four-member cast, undercuts the momentum with a tedious first act in which a city musician (Brad Burlingame) comes to Sedona to win back his angst-ridden, New Age wife (Annie Grindlay. He also meets another confused woman who is not as spacey as she looks (Janice Blake).

But the second act has juice. Busy actor Jon Sharp (also reviewed above in “Up Cat Creek”) is diabolically charming as the bare-footed, white-robed, silver-haired metaphysician, Dr. Glorious. His late arrival enlivens and almost salvages this offbeat odyssey of urban burnout.

A pleasant surprise is that the surly Burlingame and the dippy Blake emerge as human beings. Meanwhile, the wife’s spiritual totems are wryly visible in Nicole Pigeault’s wall decorations.

At 1277 N. Wilton Place , Sundays and Mondays, 8 p.m., indefinitely. $12. (213) 850-8642.