Kafka Visits a Zany World in ‘Kastle’

As long as the playwright side of Marvin Chernoff is in control of his loopy “Kafka’s Kastle Kareer!” at Company of Angels in Silver Lake, he heightens what is latently funny in Franz Kafka’s absurd, paranoid world view. That it may be the truest and most powerful world view in 20th-Century literature would seem to give “Kareer!” a real advantage.

Gleefully and good-naturedly pillaging through Kafka’s novels (especially “The Castle”), stories (a witty nod here to “The Metamorphosis”) and letters to friend Max Brod, Chernoff places Franz (Langdon Bensing) in domestic hell, where Mom and Dad (Marion Ross and Paul Michael) nag him about his useless scribblings. It’s enough to prod Franz into applying for a job--only to sit in a waiting room where no one is ever called in for an interview.

Brennan’s job here is to keep us preoccupied with the paranoid comedy, so we don’t see that it may be bursting right out of Franz’s brain: as in Kafka’s fiction, metaphor must artfully cover the literal. Bensing maintains a fine, quiet center, which only heightens the antics of Ross, Michael, Don Oscar Smith as an ape-man, Beege Barkett as a hooker and Kathleen Flynn as a nice virgin.

When, in the play’s last phase, Chernoff allows his psychologist side to take over (he is a Cal State Northridge educational psychology professor) and strip Franz’s visions down to a family schism, it blows a hole through the show. Kafka is nothing more than a mere patient, a subject of a study: Chernoff loses sight of the fact that psychology’s urge to explain is at odds with art’s urge to explore.

“Kafka’s Kastle Kareer!,” Company of Angels, 2106 Hyperion Ave., Silver Lake, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 4 p.m. Ends May 5. $10-$15; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

One-Acts at Theatre 40: Tales of Two Burnouts

A better umbrella title for “Solitaires,” the two one-acts at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills, would be “Burned-Out Cases.” In both, performer-writer David Hunt Stafford’s “The Light of My Life” and Donald Margulies’ “Zimmer,” lonely men have pretty much run out of fuel.

Under that umbrella, though, is a common problem: Too early on, it’s clear how burned-out they are, and we are dangerously close to becoming voyeurs. That’s especially the case with “Light,” since Stafford’s unemployed actor who collects lighters is pathetic in a way that director Darlene Baker’s presentational style accents.

Stafford’s actor is not so far gone that he can’t turn on the charm as he takes us on a tour through his gallery of flints and tiny cases. Predictably and schematically, though, these lighters bring up the dark passages of his life, protracting an already long tour.

Margulies, author of “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” and the dreadful “The Model Apartment,” once again explores the tender ground of Jewish-American families in “Zimmer.” He hasn’t found a means to make Zimmer anything more than a drugged-out ‘60s loser who never recovered from the Kennedy assassination, though we’re meant to take Zimmer as the voice of a generation. Mitchell Levine wisely directs with a long leash, since actor Stewart J. Zully has the deep permutations of Jewish sadness in his bones.

“Solitaires,” Theatre 40, Beverly Hills High School, 241 Moreno Drive, Mondays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends April 17. $10; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Undisciplined Actors Stymie ‘Possibilities’

Howard Barker’s “The Possibilities” might be possible with a trained, highly integrated ensemble, as aware of today’s headlines as of Greek tragedy. Such a group, alas, is all too rare in this theater-rich town, and it surely hasn’t been brought together by director Frederique Michel at the Waterfront Stage in Santa Monica.

Michel’s Waterfront company has been loyal to this theater, which unwaveringly programs difficult or more obscure works by, for example, Georg Buchner, David Mamet, Harold Pinter and Dario Fo. Just as consistently, though, many of these actors are not up to the works’ demands, especially with Barker’s inconclusive mosaic of 10 scenes in war-torn lands.

Think of his victims as specimens under glass, and you glimpse Barker’s purposes, which are closer to a scientific report, or freezing a moment in time, than anything like the “well-made play.”

It is precisely the 11 players’ lack of this rigorous discipline that stymies every scene. Pain runs through such pieces as those about a murdered weaver’s family, or a confessional by Alexander the Great, or a war heroine’s fatal infidelities; not once is the pain made truly emotive. The cast is even more at a loss in the few scenes where Barker haplessly attempts irony or wit (one about a cowering bookseller, another about a whore who’s also a loyal Party member).

They’re not helped by Michel’s idea of dressing the actors in monkish garb (by Kevin Brandyon Quinn) and grotesque masks (by Timothy Lawrence) and preserving them as a silent chorus when they’re not in a scene. It seriously constipates a play that seems swallowed by news of the world.

“The Possibilities,” Waterfront Stage, 250 Santa Monica Pier, Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends May 5. $12.50; (213) 393-6672. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

‘Criminal Minds’ Works, Then Loses It

Trio-in-danger comedies can play like road movies without the moving shots, where meandering lives work themselves out in an absurd American landscape. Robin Swicord’s version, “Criminal Minds” at the American New Theatre in Hollywood, evokes the meandering quality, and it has a funk-filled setting in Thomas A. Brown’s dinosaur-infested miniature golf course.

That’s where the funkiness ends. Con-on-the-lam Eddie Ray (a focused Tom DeFranco) thinks he’s the guy in charge, but his woman Billy Marie (Chele Martin, too well-scrubbed for the road) finds herself drawn to fellow escapee Renfroe (Chris Shearer, showing the strain of an impossible role), who Eddie Ray believes is rich. Renfroe is half-retarded, half-automaton, a kind of science fiction creation that Eddie Ray tries to control. This made-for-TV creature carries the bulk of Swicord’s comedy, so it wears very, very thin, eroded further by Billy Marie’s inexplicable attraction. The dinosaurs steal the show.

“Criminal Minds,” American New Theatre, 1540 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood, Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends May 5. $12; (213) 960-1604. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

‘Voices’: The Pain Is Yet to Show

Scott Douglas Do Vale has latched onto some real experiences with his one-man work, “Voices in the Dark,” at the igLoo Theatre in Hollywood. Now, he has to inject it with some real writing.

As it is now, “Voices” is strictly workshop stuff, full of the sound of a young writer-actor finding his way. Do Vale shows how one brother endures the suicide of another--the avoidances, the philosophical doodlings, the attempts at truth--and how forgiveness is wrought. But director Robin McKee fails to push Do Vale the actor past a pencil sketch approach to character, and Do Vale the writer resorts to a line of trite aphorisms (if only, he laments, we had a remote control for life, so we could rewind, forward or pause). Pain obviously inspired the play; it has yet to show on stage.

“Voices in the Dark,” igLoo Theatre, 6543 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, Thursdays, 8 p.m. Ends May 16. $12; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour.