Holly Hughes Reprises ‘World Without End’

It’s impossible to ignore the current National Endowment for the Arts brouhaha--the on-again, off-again grants, the clauses, the rhetoric--while watching Holly Hughes reprise her 1989 work, “World Without End,” at Highways. But it’s also impossible not to contemplate a possibly depressing reality behind Hughes’ autobiographical work.

People like Hughes and Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) are never, ever , going to understand each other, because they stand for America’s opposite cultural poles. Hughes’ background is deep Midwest (Saginaw, Mich.), and, like many gay American artists, she fled to the big city from a rural or suburban backwater. Helms would call these places the country’s backbone. Hughes reveals in “World” the roots of her rebellious nature: Her mother drilled eccentric notions into her, such as loving her own body. Body love and rebellion, as Helms sees it, are the whole problem.

But the current storm over the allegedly obscene and rejected NEA candidates--Hughes, Karen Finley, John Fleck and Tim Miller--is clearly a tempest in a teapot as far as Hughes’ work is concerned. There is more ribald sexual innuendo in a host of publicly and privately funded performances than in Hughes’ cynical accounts of male and female sex. (The other impossibility, as Hughes sees it, is men ever understanding women.)

None of these is the problem here. The real problem may be performance art right now. After going through its Libertarian phase when just about anyone could get up in front of a crowd, to its Art phase when visual artists appropriated theater for new ends (and when Hughes came into view), the form is in a Political/ Auto-Confessional phase that “World Without End” exemplifies. When Hughes jumps from memoir into topical politics and lesbian anger, she co-opts her critics, stating she has every right to talk about something other than art’s pristine world. If it’s not your idea of art, tough.

Good for her. But this jump doesn’t take the Kate Stafford- directed piece anywhere: She eventually returns to the more evocative, “artful” area of Mom and Saginaw. Hughes can’t really escape art, though you wish she could escape from the idea of herself as the center of this “World.” Inadvertently, she demonstrates how performance artists must drop their habit of private solipsism if the form is to realize its social importance. It is still about the politics of the individual, but, these days, that isn’t enough.

At 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, on Sunday, 8:30 p.m. $10; (213) 453-1755.

‘Century’ and ‘Dates’ at Tamarind Theatre

Were the order of two Tamarind Theatre one-acts, Murphy Guyer’s “The American Century” and Jane Willis’ “Men Without Dates,” reversed, the audience would not be left in the doldrums. So we’ll reverse the order here, and talk about “Men” first.

If only there was much to talk about. Willis has written a good-natured jab at macho camaraderie, but it’s no more than a TV skit. Murph (Charles Hoyes) is not only engaged to a woman he’s impregnated but hardly knows, but he’s quitting the New York City Fire Department to prolong his life. His buddy and all-around schmuck, Sal (Tom Lenihan), thinks Murph is blowing it, but Sal is no master of life himself. Some anger is released, and the bartender (Anthony Mitchell) pulls a prank on Sal. And that’s about it. Director Steve Eastin makes sure his men maintain the proper macho demeanor.

Guyer’s piece is as clever as Willis’ is vacuous. The cleverness, though, comes from not knowing Guyer’s key narrative device ahead of time, though time has a lot to do with it. Think of it as a “Twilight Zone” episode in a happy 1945 kitchen, where Margaret (Caroline Bedore) is welcoming Tom (Michael Lariscy) home from war. But when a stranger in khaki (J. Michael Kiel) arrives, their lives turn upside down.

Guyer plays an elaborate joke on what Walter Lippmann termed “The American Century,” in which the innocent confidence of the postwar years faced a maturation process of ‘60s turmoil and ‘70s self-doubt that led to the end of an empire. Director Henry Polic II needs to sharpen his actors’ attention span--Bedore justs drifts off from time to time--but it’s dazzling how Guyer squeezes decades into a 45-minute domestic scene.

At 5919 Franklin Ave., on Sundays through Tuesdays, 8 p.m., until July 31. $12; (213) 466-1767.

Company of Characters Offers ‘Lost Angels’

“The Twilight Zone’s” shadow also looms over the first (“Card Shark Mark”) of two Bo Brinkman one-acts jointly titled “Lost Angels,” at Company of Characters. In this case, it’s the ghost of Harry (Ron Walsh), the card shark and partner of an old coot (Will Hare) who helps out at a Texas beer bar. What puts a strain on the reunion are the victims of Texas’ current economic slump, especially a bitterly unemployed young guy, Hoppy (Chris Spiro), who happens to be Harry’s son.

Brinkman might look to filling out his characters and the play; as it is, “Card Shark Mark” is too compressed to credibly handle such fierce acts as Russian roulette and car torching. Director Brinkman, though, finesses comic touches in his familial struggle.

“Ice House” is a more ambitious piece but ultimately collapses in a melodramatic fit. While Brinkman knows how to turn the dramatic screws, keeping us wondering if Jean Sagal’s Kay will go back to Texas with her ex-beau Pake (Doug Stevenson) or stay in her current Hollywood refuge with her Greek fiance, Vassil (Anthony Leonardi), he also forces Kay to do frankly stupid things.

Why, if she’s supposedly learned her lesson and split once and for all from Pake, does she decide to go with him? Sympathy is hard to work up for a character so beholden to a writer’s plotting, especially when the plot sinks into bathos. It’s an opera plot, in fact, and Melissa Gilbert-Brinkman directs with a sense of operatic emotion.

At 12655 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, on Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 5 p.m., until Sept. 9. $10; (213) 466-1767.

‘Murder in El Salvador’ at Waterfront Stage

Journalists who have spent enough time in El Salvador talk about the surreal isolation of the Salvadoran upper class from the country’s war, like an off-shore party yacht cruising while people on shore are killing themselves. Charles L. Mee Jr.’s “The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador,” at Waterfront Stage, observes this isolation, as well as what happens when the “yacht” has to return to the harbor.

At first, Mee’s dry, Olympian observation of an outdoor cocktail party while the airships roar overhead is striking for what it leaves out (the war itself) and for a mannered pace recalling Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad.” Director Charles A. Duncombe exaggerates this, having his actors play these self-satisfied capitalists like mannequins.

The effect of people as stick figures wears off on stage much quicker than on film; besides, Resnais exerted an extraordinary control that made “Marienbad” mesmerizing. Mee is after a similar hypnotic effect, but lacks the control. (He also lacks a sense of humor.)

Duncombe’s epic theatrical touches, like a huge white set, which also serves as a screen for war images, fail to mitigate against Mee’s soporific, anti-drama style. On the other hand, though Duncombe’s actors are asked to play in the style, they don’t sound as if they believe in it. An “Investigation” should tell us something more than that the Central American rich are fools to think they can get away with murder.

At 250 Santa Monica Pier, Santa Monica, on Fridays through Sundays, 8 p.m., indefinitely. $12.50; (213) 393-6672.