FESTIVAL ’90 : STAGE REVIEWS / OPEN FESTIVAL : ‘Democracy’ a Newsreel of Nascent America

Imagine traveling the American frontier when Andrew Jackson was President. The lingering image from Pierre Epstein’s “Democracy in America,” a one-man, Alexis de Tocqueville reminiscence, is of the forests, Indians and untamed nature associated with our 19th-Century landscape painters.

In this strange little verbal newsreel of a show (only an hour long) we meet Epstein’s de Tocqueville shuffling about his parlor, browsing through musty manuscripts, even at one point handing patrons in the house glasses of wine.

At Beneath Broadway in Long Beach on Wednesday (the show is now encamped at Stages), Epstein’s tinny French accent was vocally frail. But his performance is sufficiently human to suggest a visit with an old professor who’s turned a touch cynical.

All the words are taken from de Tocqueville’s writings. One description of his encounter with a lone Indian in a deep wood, “the ghost in the forest,” is hauntingly beautiful. Other comments about the American penchant for banks and banquets are wry and biting. At 1540 N. McCadden Place, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Sept. 15. $10; (213) 466-1767.