‘Lady-Like’ an Elegant, Effervescent Tale of 3 Women

Like John Iacovelli’s minimalist set seemingly borne into the clouds, Laura Shamas’ elegant, effervescent biographical play, “Lady-Like,” at the Court Theatre in West Hollywood, is shot through with the artist’s desire to transport the mind. Shamas’ material is so willfully and intelligently selective that it’s charming to notice what she left out of her story. What she has left in is more than charming: It is as solid yet fragile as cut crystal.

Shamas’ ladies, though, are made of other material. They face the world, as dogged and tenacious as their 18th-Century Irish blood allows them to be--and certainly beyond what Irish society permitted. The so-called “Ladies of Llangollen”--Lady Eleanor Butler, Sarah Posonby and their maid, Mary (Kathleen Garrett, Christina Carlisi and Diana Bellamy, respectively)--fled their suffocating homeland, improvised male disguises along the way, and finally settled down to 50 years of unconventional contentment in a Welsh house.

This outline would suit a staid, BBC-approved drama, but Shamas has taken a different path altogether. Her first act is fleecy, free, slightly irreverent--with plenty of chances for director Jules Aaron to insert wonderfully suggestive touches (Bellamy, at one point, becomes a droll mail carrier for the two beleaguered, corresponding women). Her second act slows to an autumnal pace, as death enters the now-famous household.

The whole corps of British literati, it seems, passed through their doors, but Shamas never shows them. Her story obsessively fixes on the triangular friendship (Plato’s spirit rules here), becoming an extraordinary fable on how interdependent souls feed and fulfill each other. Carlisi dexterously shows Sarah’s full development, Garrett’s Kathleen moves from whip-in-hand rebel to blind invalid and Bellamy consistently avoids the standard maid pratfalls for a richer, deeper focus. And so it is for the entire, shimmering production.

“Lady-Like,” Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood, Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 6:30 and 9:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends June 2. $10-$20; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes.

‘Ave. A’: Heated Battle of Brothers, Emotions

From the solemn, miniaturized pathos and ‘50s Appalachia setting of his first play, “A Gift From Heaven,” playwright David Steen has moved to a broader, more dangerous New York-style pathos in his new work, “Avenue A,” at the Cast Theatre in Hollywood.

It’s a big commute, and along the way, Steen has become a tougher writer. In this tale of how Chickie (an intelligent Mark Ruffalo) breaks away from the doting control and bad vibes of his criminally insane older brother, Joey (Gene Lithgow), Steen sweeps away any vestige of romance, cheap melodrama or easy sympathy. He just lets his humans in an apartment cage fight it out (Andy Daley’s set is Post-Bleak).

Maybe it’s not Foreman vs. Holyfield, but director Jim Holmes stages a heated, Son of Sam Shepard joust in which the emotionally grounded Chickie and Gloria Mann’s Rosa, Joey’s girlfriend, try not to be pulled into the crazy undertow set off by Joey and his ex-con buddy, Larry (Steen, scarifyingly nutty).

Mann makes you accept Rosa’s desire to help Joey, even while we know that Chickie is right to urge her to get away. Steen and Holmes suggest that Joey and Larry are not simply too dangerously unhinged for the streets; they’re too innocent, too far into their private universes for anyone to help.

Lithgow’s mannered, actorish performance only rides the surface of Joey’s stormy inner seas, but Steen, Mann and Ruffalo dive full throttle into the heart of this wrenchingly etched play. Steen is no one-shot playwright.

“Avenue A,” Cast Theatre, 800 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood, Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends June 1. $12; (213) 462-0265. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

Two by Sargent at Theatre/Theater

Michael Sargent, unlike Steen, is a writer interested in the business that happens just before or after people fight each other. This is ironically so in “The Kid Takes A Shot!,” the first half of Sargent’s “Knockouts!” double-bill at Theatre/Theater’s Back Space in Hollywood.

Jason Reed’s kid could be a contender, and his boxing coach (Harvey Perr) is all encouragement. Perr’s coach, his belly out to here and festooned by a silly fat tie, conveys a guy hoping against hope: The kid blows his first match, and a floozy (Julie Summer) he’s been cavorting with is pregnant.

Unlike previous Sargent losers (in “I Hate!” and “My Crime”), Reed eventually triumphs, though it’s all mitigated by director Sargent’s sardonic, portentous stage pictures, which flash on and off with giddy paranoia.

The second work, “Mister Lonely,” is much more indefinite. Wally Michaels plays a fading actor who wins the lottery (typically with Sargent, we never learn exactly how much he won). He’s the middle generation, caught between his doddering Pops (Lee Kissman, under all the good makeup) and a young, witless live-in stud (Erik Hanson, who is almost always in a bathtub). Then, his no-luck sister Olive (Tina Preston, in another of her gutsy, frank, very adult performances) presses Michaels for cash. Nothing much happens--just the slow winding down of time, which, even if he’s only 22, Sargent seems to know something about.

“Knockouts!,” Theatre/Theater, 1713 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood, Fridays, 10:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 8 and 10:30 p.m. Indefinitely. $10; (213) 850-6941. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

‘Long and Short’ a Mix of the Cogent, Slight

The long and the short of “The Long and the Short of Gerald Tooie” is that it’s only as good as it’s played. Gene Butler’s alternately cogent and slight comedy about male sexual inadequacy--Gerald’s, at least--bounces along fairly well under Butler’s own direction at Theatre/Theater.

Gerald (Keith MacKechnie) explains his problems and notions to us in monologues interspersed between scenes from a life as it tumbles from ‘60s flower power to ‘90s identity crisis. None of his solos is remotely as witty or enlightening as the stuff that Gerald must live out (such as when a woman tells him that “men are like ice cream cones--they melt at the touch”). He plays the field: the tough type (Lesley Kyle), the purse-clutching type (Kimmy Robertson, even funnier than her secretary on “Twin Peaks”), the bed type (Brenda Bakke).

You can see that Gerald is headed for a deep ‘80s slumber in the suburbs, and Butler’s writing never fully recovers from the inevitable move. Debra Dusay punches things up as a married woman who’s no mere housewife, and, of all people, Bo Hopkins (casting aside his coyote-like persona from Sam Peckinpah’s films for a confused bisexual husband) adds a few dollops of pure, guileless comedy.

“The Long and the Short of Gerald Tooie,” Theatre/Theater, 1713 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood, Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m. Ends May 17. $15; (213) 850-6941. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.