STAGE REVIEW : ‘AIDS/US II’: Life-Affirming Vignettes

At the curtain call of “AIDS/US II,” the 11 people on stage, whose lives have been transformed by HIV, call out the names of loved ones who have died from the disease. Suddenly from the audience other names are shouted or murmured. The effect is shattering, as if in a transitory moment the patches on the AIDS Quilt had taken flight.

Talk about a buoyant finale. The point about “AIDS/US II,” which premiered in the packed Gallery Theatre on Sunday in Barnsdall Park--a performance dedicated to the late Cast Theatre producer Ted Schmitt--is that it’s life-enhancing. An outgrowth of the first “AIDS/US” show staged here in 1986, the work is not about dying, and it’s anything but glum. Its language is often raucously sexual. Some of these people, in their candor, are delirious that they’re alive.

The culturally diverse men and women on stage, in quick, alternating segments that keep your eye moving from one person to the next, tell their true-life stories, scripts in hand but rarely used. Nobody’s acting, which is the secret of achievement here.

When the show ends, after a brisk hour and 15 minutes, you feel you know most of these people, a testament to the non-actors and the discipline forged by director Michael Kearns.

Standing out in this ensemble effort, because he’s so self-consciously genuine, is Tony Apodaca, who’s a living rebuke to his dementia diagnosis. AIDS Hospice experts gave him up for dead months ago. Homeless and depressed, he tells how he took a rope and walked into the woods in Griffith Park intending to hang himself. (He kept slipping through the noose.) Several others said they considered suicide (before deciding the rainbow was enough).

This is no mere talkathon. It’s not even a play. The term docudrama fails to capture its heart. Certainly it’s therapy, but what good theater isn’t? The material emerged from group interviews led by Kearns, much in the way “A Chorus Line” was developed, and was compiled into a script by James Carroll Pickett.

There’s not a whiny, self-pitying moment. In fact, the problem may be the opposite. One not quite forgivable lapse is the sunny clergyman (Steve Pieters) whose AIDS appears in total remission. He may have good reason to be Mr. Cheer, but a little of his rosiness goes a long way. Is it possible for such a presentation to be too upbeat? Maybe, but it sure beats a revival of “As Is” or “The Normal Heart.”

One of the troupe put it well: his endurance, he said, is like living through “a period of grace.” God comes up a lot in a few cases. On the other hand, behind the grit, linger the testimonies of fear, guilt and doubt.

The cast, as it were, looks healthy considering that most have the AIDS virus. A few are not AIDS-afflicted but dramatize the effect of family loss, in the instances of a black married couple whose young son died and an Altadena mother (Helenclare Cox) whose adult son died. The original show’s lone holdover, Cox needs stronger vocal projection. Similar near-inaudible diction blunts the AIDS trauma of Andrea Skopp, who tested positive after an affair with an IV drug user.

One member, Alison Arngrim (who played what she called “the prairie bitch” Nellie Oleson on “Little House on the Prairie”), recounts the AIDS struggle of the actor who played her “Prairie” husband, Steve Tracy (who was in the original “AIDS/US” and has since died).

So-called confessional theater can be courageous for the wrong reasons, insular and self-serving. But “AIDS/US II” serves us all. An Artists Confronting AIDS production, the experience underscores the us in AIDS/US.

At Barnsdall Park, 4808 Hollywood Blvd., June 24 at 8 p.m. Then the schedule moves to Sundays at 5 p.m.: July 1, 8, 15 at Chapel of St. Francis and St. Mary, 3621 Brunswick Ave., Atwater; July 22 and 29 at the Skylight Theater, 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave.; Aug. 5, 12, 19 and 26 at Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. Requested donations: $10. (213) 856-8943.