STAGE REVIEWS : Wordy One-Acts at Burbage Theatre

Pretension is never enlightening, and the self-conscious murkiness of two one-acts directed and written by Dennis Clontz at the Burbage Theatre Ensemble are grueling examples of artifice gone awry.

Clontz, like a man starving for language, has plunged into multi-leveled psycho-babble in “Peggy Sue” and fallen into a thicket of poetic gibberish in “Night Watch,” which is centered on a dying man and his last second of life.

The latter is artfully staged. It includes many devices of ritual harmony: Chinese Noh theater, percussive musical instruments, pristine choric work, and ambitious shadow theater with great backlighting on a giant screen. But the unraveling of it all is painful, incomprehensible and turgid, despite the efforts of a talented cast.

* “Interfusions,” Burbage Theatre, 2330 Sawtelle Blvd., West L.A., Thursdays-Fridays, 8:30 p.m. Ends Aug. 16. $12-15; (213) 478-0897. Running time: 2 hours.