Case Study in Playwright Development

If it’s true that artists re-create a dominant theme or vision over and over again, then playwright Howard Korder’s two one-acts at the Lex Theatre are a case study in a playwright’s development.

Korder is the first recipient of the Ted Schmitt Award by the L.A. Drama Critics Circle for his drama “Search and Destroy.” The genesis of that play is spelled out in Korder’s strongly produced two-character satire about a movie pitch session, “Imagining America,” which the Lex first presented last year on an oddball bill with Tennessee Williams.

Both one-acts at the current Actors Conservatory Ensemble production contain resourceful acting and direction on an empty stage with only a few props. The evening’s highlight is the opening shorter piece, in which a hustling out-of-work movie director (the wonderfully callow Bob Mendelsohn) asks an executive at a Fundamentalist production company (the hilariously unctuous Charles H. Hyman) to “imagine America.” Burr DeBenning’s directorial options are unique and on the money.

The more ambitious, 12-character “Nobody,” about blue-collar burnout, greed, right wing crazies and domestic malaise, is acted by Mark Haining in a maddening comatose manner. The anti-hero’s depression (Korder’s interpretation? Director Ron Canada’s? The actor’s? ) seems precious rather than involving.

In any event, you don’t sympathize with this blank-faced Everyman blessed with a loving wife and son, and his maniacal violence is poorly developed. The work looks dated and derivative. But “Imagining” is worth the trip.

“Nobody” and “Imagining America,” Lex Theatre, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood. Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends April 7. $10. (213) 463-6244. Running time: 2 hours.

Magner Directs Hauptmann Curiosity

Once a year Martin Magner, 91, comes out of retirement and directs a play, usually turn-of-the-century European and, in this case, for the Goethe Institute. Gerhart Hauptmann’s “The Beaver Coat” (1890) is even older than Magner, who first saw it in his native Germany in 1932.

Magner, honored two years ago with a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, hasn’t lost a step, either as a director or prowling the packed house at the Harman Avenue Theatre. One may quibble with his choice of “The Beaver Coat”--a dated, innocuous thieves comedy that reportedly has never been seen in Los Angeles--when Hauptmann’s more socially important “The Weavers” would have been a much stronger choice. But a curiosity is a curiosity, and the cartoon-like “Beaver Coat” is certainly that.

Without belaboring the inane plot about a washerwoman (the boisterous Courtenay McWhinney) and a stolen beaver coat, the fun in this production is its sheer quaintness. One thing Magner knows for sure is the Prussian idiom, and it’s mirrored perfectly with the witch-hunting, arrogant magistrate (marvelously caricatured by Jeffrey Winner) and his clerical mole (the amusingly ramrod stiff Robert Axelrod, who salutes paintings of the Kaiser).

Infectious spirit earmarks the 11 cast members, but the unvarying bright lighting design is tiresome, the set looks flat and weird with tropical greenery, and the comedy today plays almost like a child’s fable. As long as he’s gone this far, Magner really ought to do it in German. The Goethe Institute would lap it up.

“The Beaver Coat,” Harman Avenue Theatre, 522 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends April 14. $8-$12. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Vietnam War 1-Acts Are a Tough Sit

We hate to think about it, but somewhere somebody is probably grinding out a play on the Persian Gulf War. (It’s gone largely unnoticed, but the Groundlings were the first to deflate our war euphoria in a lampoon of the Gulf victory current in their new show.) Meanwhile, the pain of Vietnam won’t go away--nor should it, which is the point of the revival of three Vietnam War one-acts, “Reflections of War,” at the Igloo Theatre.

The show is tough to sit through because it’s boring. Director Neil Monaco undermines his production with the grueling opener: Tom Cole’s “Medal of Honor Rag,” in which a doctor (Scott Trost) in a mental ward tries to soothe a patient (Mark Pellegrino) who’s won medals for atrocities. The play sounds like a pamphlet.

Things pick up with Terrence McNally’s jungle war game in “Botticelli” (with terrific sound effects and flavorful performances by Brennan Howard and Michael Capellupo). But the conclusion descends into garrulous monologues with the third item, “Reflections,” albeit with the comparative freshness of two female characters (Holly Gagnier and Sheila Ryan Caan). The production is timely, but lamentably a shredded, fluttery yellow ribbon for an experience we’re still denying.

“Reflections of War,” Igloo Theatre, 6543 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends April 14. $10. (213) 285-3311. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

‘Savage in Limbo’ From Durning Troupe

Charles Durning is artistic director of the newly formed 2nd Avenue Productions. While he didn’t helm the company’s inaugural show at the Tamarind Theatre, “Savage in Limbo” (Patricia Rouleau directed), he wasn’t a mere bystander either. A basket of flowers, please. What a focused ensemble this cast turns out to be.

It’s surprising this John Patrick Shanley bar-room drama, subtitled “a concert play,” isn’t staged more often (it premiered locally at the Cast in 1987). These are roles--five downbeats in search of themselves--actors die for. Shanley, who wrote the movie “Moonstruck,” plumbs deep and comedic levels on both naturalistic and surrealistic grounds. And the actors here, particularly the three women, animate misery and anger without falling into histrionics.

The flaw in the production is the pale set and lighting design. This should be a Bronx dive, grubby and moody. Instead, we get a bland, nondescript bar devoid of any theatricality or subterranean impulse.

But the wigged-out redhead at the corner of the bar (the sensational Michelle Stafford) quietly plops you into Purgatory. The squabbling Susan Falcon and Anita Gregory flail at life’s rotten hand like Furies as Brogan Young’s muscular, beseeching hunk and Michael Wiseman’s surly bartender struggle to comprehend the slings and arrows.

This is a company to watch.

“Savage in Limbo,” Tamarind Theatre, 5919 Franklin Ave., Hollywood. Sundays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Indefinitely. $10. (213) 285-8192. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.