A Trip Into a Muddled World in East West’s ‘Little Sheba’

East West Players is known for tackling spiky projects and taking chances. They do it again with William Inge’s “Come Back, Little Sheba” and the result, though flawed, rewards their efforts.

The play’s focus on the teetering relationship between disappointed, alcoholic Doc and his slovenly, bemused wife, Lola, assumes a new shape in the casting of Nobu McCarthy as Lola. She’s petite, a little edgy and brings an interesting quality of confusion to the role. She takes her audience into Lola’s muddled world.

John Dullaghan’s Doc is crisp and empathetic and, though he could make more of Doc’s lascivious obsession with their boarder Marie, his interpretation has both feet solidly on the ground. Szu Wang is a delightful Marie, almost ditzy but not quite, and Nelson Mashita is expertly brash as the athlete who distracts her from thoughts of her fiance.

As that fiance, Vincent Saito Mast is an outrageous cartoon and jars the rhythm of Tom Atha’s direction and its slowly building tension. Sometimes, particularly in the first act, the build is too slow, but the last two acts work just fine. Meehar Tom does well as nosy neighbor Mrs. Coffman, and Dan Buchanan gets some well-deserved laughs as the cocky milkman who slips Lola his picture from a muscle magazine.

Atha hasn’t tried to update the play, and Gronk’s set helps establish the period, along with the costumes by Terence Tam Soon, Rae Creevey’s evocative lighting and Jonathan Flood’s sound.

At 4424 Santa Monica Blvd.; Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m.; ends July 15. $12-$15; (213) 660-0366.

Waterfront Stage’s ‘Baby’ Dabbles in Insanity

Another type of family is teetering in Waterfront Stage’s revival of Christopher Durang’s “Baby With the Bathwater,” but this one is on the brink of insanity.

Durang’s crayoned diatribe shouts that parents shouldn’t be parents because none of them know what they’re doing. This particular couple of lintheads don’t even know what sex their baby is, so they call it Daisy. When Daisy grows up, well, he just sort of goes along with the gag.

Going along with Durang’s gag helps when you’re watching one of them, and the effort is aided immeasurably by the steady, frantic pace of Frederique Michel’s direction and the utter seriousness of the gender-shattered cast.

Sherry Landau and Donald Grant are attractive and intent enough to make the parents very funny, and Bill Moynihan, Katherine Burke and Lawrence Levy have the proper Durang spirit in or out of drag. But it’s John Blevins who holds the attention most in Daisy’s long solo scene talking to the voice of his psychiatrist (telescoping a couple of thousand visits). It’s a difficult scene for an actor, and Blevins makes it believable, touching and very funny.

At 250 Santa Monica Pier, Santa Monica; Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m.; ends June 30. $12.50; (213) 393-6672.

One-Acts ‘Billy,’ ‘Math’ at Flight Theatre

This Flight Theatre evening of two short one-acts, by Charles Evered, is tasty, but leaves one hungry for more substantial fare almost as soon as the lights go up.

The first, “Billy and Dago,” is about a guy from New Jersey named Dago who lives from freight train to freight train and carries his world in a backpack. Out of the blue, he casually drops in on his old buddy Billy, now a buyer in Manhattan’s garment district. They reminisce and try to re-bond, but neither can buy into the other’s current dreams.

“It’s Kinda Like Math” takes place in a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey, during a visit to catatonic Pap by his understanding buddy Jimmy. The existence of guardian angels is the problem they try to work out.

Both plays, forthrightly directed by the author, have crackling dialogue that rings right on pitch, but neither play takes its journey as far as it could.

Shane Patrick McCullough is excellent as the yuppie buyer in the opener, but in “Math” he doesn’t have much to do, except glance a couple of times at his visitor. The evening belongs to Peter Gregory, first as the gypsy idealist Dago, and then as Jimmy, whose own vision of a guardian angel makes Pap look less crazy. Gregory generates excitement and finds complexity in otherwise simple characters.

At 6472 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; Fridays through Sundays, 8 p.m.; indefinitely. $10; (213) 464-2124.

‘The Dream Store’ at Basehart Playhouse

The action in Moe Baker and Ilene M. Biderman’s “The Dream Store,” at the Richard Basehart Playhouse, is set in Schwab’s Drug Store. But that memorable site is long gone, and this silly musical with its faded ‘40s stereotypes is set in the present.

The show’s anachronisms are matched in their backward glance by the score (mostly by Baker) which, though hummable, is as dated as the jokes.

Genny Boles directs the cast with energy and spirit, but none of their efforts count for much.

The only survivors in the large company are Patricia Sherich as the store’s feisty owner, Sarah Benoit as Ms. Upfer (she’s “up for” everything), and understudy Alexander Tostado as the cowboy hero, who has a comfortable way with Baker’s pseudo-Western songs and believable charisma.

At 21028-B Victory Blvd., Woodland Hills; tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. $15; (213) 654-8226.