Acting Heroics Give Boost to Anemic ‘Prairie’

Watching Allison Robbins’ “Metropolitan Prairie” at Hollywood’s Friends and Artists Theatre is like looking at a distant object when one eye is blurry and the other one peers through a binocular lens. Robbins’ play is leagues away from being stage-worthy, but, in a Quixotic gesture, most of director Sal Romeo’s cast have valiantly tunneled into the play’s human heart.

Robbins has obviously plumbed her knowledge acquired from being a registered nurse and a medical reporter for her increasingly melodramatic drama of heinous medical (and human) malpractice.

But all that knowledge hasn’t been skillfully filtered through art. Robbins introduces hospital roommates Steve (Mat Kirkwood), serious, embittered and bookish, and Barret (Don Stark), a likable dumb lug. It’s already a clumsily schematic setup, but then she cuts forward to a hearing that gives away the tragic fate of one of them. We’re stuck in a death watch.

There’s nothing fresh or inventive about the flashback/flash-forward structure; it’s closer to a TV movie’s clunkiness than cinema poetry. Robbins’ literalness in the pursuit of coolly examining medical industry politics drops a lead weight on her play; her instincts for black-and-white melodrama wreak just as much damage.

Then there are the actors, particularly Stark--who inhabits Barret with stunning, emotional totality--and Jane Beller as Barret’s wife, whose loyalties are being tested. Kirkwood, though saddled with a character inspired by anti-intellectual hatred, manages to eke out some real sympathy, and Allison Gregory’s nurse is perhaps the show’s most effective display of moral quandary. How they do it, in such a severely flawed play on Robert W. Zentis’ space-crunched set, is amazing.

“Metropolitan Prairie,” Friends and Artists Theatre, 1761 N. Vermont Ave., Hollywood, Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Runs indefinitely. $12; (213) 664-0689. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

Production Can’t Grasp Breadth of ‘Memories’

Underneath the American pastorale surface of Arthur Giron’s “Becoming Memories,” at the Crossley Theatre in Hollywood, lies an impressionistic portrait of pain, frustration and a few small victories. This look back in time (1911 to the present) at the lives of four Midwest families remembers that there were no good old days.

Robin Strand’s production can’t really take in Giron’s panorama, and not just because Mark Henderson’s set looks like an afterthought. Her cast is spotty to say the least: Deanna Pampena and John Newcombe explore a wide swath of nuances as a loving Christian-Jewish couple, but Mel Fair flubs the crucial role of Jack, an Irish widower who can’t get over his wife’s death and takes his sorrows out on his decent second wife (Kristina Lankford). And though Giron saves his most impassioned scenes for young, free-spirited Rosina (Karen Stanley) ground down by stolid older husband Albert (John Elerick), the two actors can’t unlock their fiery potential.

“Becoming Memories,” Crossley Theatre, 1760 N. Gower Ave., Hollywood, Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends Oct. 13. $10; (213) 964-3586. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

‘Silence’ Broken By Inadequate Performers

Talk about actors unable to find the key: The ensemble that director Ian Murray has collected for “The Sentence Is Silence,” at the Church in Ocean Park in Santa Monica, is many things, but committed isn’t one of them. Yet close, hopefully knowledgeable affinity with the material--play scenes, poems, prose fragments about imprisonment and censorship compiled by members of International PEN--is mandatory here.

Murray’s young actors have a rough enough time as it is, since the program crams 17 scenes into an hour, so few scenes (written by, among others, Wole Soyinka, Tom Stoppard, Primo Levi, Harold Pinter and Lenny Bruce) have a chance to sink in. The ones that do tend to be home-grown: Bruce’s monologue on the verb to come , and a piece by actors Amy Benedict and Beth Caskie on the Supreme Court’s abortion “gag rule.” Here, the actors tell us something’s at stake; otherwise, they’re doing scene workshops.

“The Sentence Is Silence,” Church in Ocean Park, Santa Monica, 235 Hill St., Santa Monica, Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Sept. 29. $5; (213) 479-1611. Running time: 1 hour.

Beauty Salon Banter All Washed Up in ‘Cuts’

Adventurous American theater used to be guided by the spirit of progressive group action--and sometimes, group writing. A few adventurers are still doing it: Witness the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which just graced Santa Monica Festival ’91. More group writing is going on in the same neighborhood, but it feels like an appropriation.

The Cate Caplin-directed ensemble piece, “Choice Cuts,” is someone’s idea of a cute night out for Westside yuppies. The cuteness begins with setting the play for five female voices in Ravello Hair Salon, as four of the women (Sydney Coberly, Laura Crosson, Barbara O’Neill Ferris and Laura Piening) talk while getting their hair done, with one beautician (Penny Peyrot) bouncing around from one to the other.

It’s all soon lost in the rinse. The gabfest, in which each actress wrote her own monologue (subsequently cut by Caplin into pieces for a collage-like structure), goes no deeper than the most banal remarks about a woman’s self-image (“It’s much more important how you feel inside”). This is the kind of thing Eve Arden knew how to make funny and ironic; I left the salon missing the late, great comedienne more than ever.

“Choice Cuts,” Ravello Hair Salon, 730 Arizona Ave., Santa Monica, Saturdays and Mondays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 13. $12; (213) 969-4698. Running time: 1 hour.

‘Relationships’ Needs a Little More Direction

“Relationships,” writer-director Joel Schwartz’s pair of one-acts on gay male hopes and tribulations, at Santa Monica’s Powerhouse, suffers from the hyphenate syndrome. There are those who believe playwrights should never direct their own work, though examples abound which cast that conviction into doubt. “Relationships” is definitely not one of them.

Neither “Remembering” nor “Enthralling Moments with Bo and the Rescuer” have enthralling moments to remember. The first could, with much work, become a charming memory piece about a lonely young man, Cal (Pier Carlo Talenti) recalling how his Aunt Dora (Helen Siff) opened his eyes to culture and life. The more involved “Bo and the Rescuer” unengagingly tries to track the mutual distrusts and contradictions of a gay couple (subdued Richard Gallery and overacting Randall Lee Irwin). Schwartz, though, can take comfort in one thing: Terrence McNally’s own stab at this theme in “The Lisbon Traviata” was no better.

“Relationships,” the Powerhouse, 3116 2nd St., Santa Monica, Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Runs indefinitely. $10; (213) 392-6529. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

Mixed Results in Double Bill by Haller

It’s hard to get a fix on playwright Michael Haller’s view of teen misfits after watching his two one-acts at Theatre/Theater, “The Life of Douggie Campbell” and “Dear Elizabeth.” He seems torn between mocking excoriation (“Elizabeth”) and a cool but unmistakable empathy (“Douggie”).

In “Elizabeth,” Eric (Greg Rowen) sits alone at his desk, writing increasingly feverish fan-love letters to Elizabeth Perkins. Rowen’s doe-eyed look only heightens the sense that Eric is a character set up for a fall, pathetic without the pathos. Dweeb is his middle name.

Empathy, though, seems to bring out Haller’s best instincts. Mysteriously killed by gunshots on a street, nerdy loner Douggie Campbell had few acquaintances, but Haller has them all show up to tell us what they knew about him.

Is this an inquiry? A trial in a dream state? It’s as open as Douggie’s murder case.

The sincerity of the writing and most of the performances in “Douggie” is such that, in the end, we wonder if Douggie’s sad tale isn’t true. Some of this is due to the direction of Lee Kissman, a fine actor himself, while Jack Black’s Rick injects an unnervingly, comically disjointed point of view that makes us question everything we’re hearing.

“The Life of Douggie Campbell” and “Dear Elizabeth , “ Theatre/Theater, 1713 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood, Thursdays, 8 p.m.; Fridays 8 and 10 p.m. Ends Sept. 27. $10; (213) 464-8938. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.