STAGE REVIEWS : A Gallery of Misfits in ‘more intimacies’ at LATC

The lower case lettering on “intimacies” and “more intimacies,” in repertory at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, is not an affectation. It’s a signal, like a tap on a window pane, that the lives dramatized here are uncomfortably private matters. You watch these characters like a voyeur who comes away not sullied but purified.

In Michael Kearns’ new work, “more intimacies,” Fernando is a flamenco dancer, Jesse is a black lesbian, Father Anthony has sex with boys in his parish, Mike is a macho hemophiliac, Dedee is married to a bisexual, Paul is deaf. Not people most of us know. And yet solo performer Kearns brings them all to life in a mercurial display.

The show is a follow-up to Kearns’ original gallery of diverse misfits, “intimacies,”which Kearns introduced to L.A. audiences last year. Seen back to back at LATC, the productions, in Kearns’ writing and performance style, loom among the most vivid portraits of AIDS-afflicted characters.

The term gay theater doesn’t apply here. True, most of the characters grapple with homosexuality and are AIDS outcasts, but Kearns, who is personally active on the AIDS political battleground, is not a plea-bargainer or agenda-rattler in his art. Kearns’ 12 characters (six in each show) eclipse the gay and AIDS lapel. He creates a Vanity Fair of loners and in a startling range of speech patterns.

In the course of the swift, 75-minute “more intimacies,” Kearns vocal accents shift from Latino to black to redneck to a thirtysomething woman to Italian to the language of the hearing-impaired (where the actor communicates in both sign language and the halting sounds of the hearing-disabled).

There are no costume changes. Kearns’ props are a chair and his characteristic red scarf, a scarf which he twists and folds into telling character details, including the suggestion of pregnancy.

His characters’ bursts of sexual imagery are raw and occasionally offensive, but the truth is that most of it is funny. The HIV-infected priest, talking about his weakness for boys in his parish, says with a tremor that “being a good Catholic, I didn’t use a condom.”

There’s a tendency for Kearns to be florid in some of the sketches. The opening character monologue in “more intimacies,” about a Mexican flamenco dancer, a man conditioned to conquer the ladies but who discovers he’s gay, is devastating in its erotic squalor.

The premiere of “more intimacies” is indeed more “intimacies.” The format is identical; there’s no great distinction between the two shows. The characters are vitally different and yet cracked mirrors of one another. The technique alone is a case study. Kearns always knows when less is more.

At 514 S. Spring St., Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 8 p.m. (in rep with “intimacies,” Thursdays, 8 p.m.) . Ends Nov. 15. $15; (213) 627-5599.