A Compassionate View of Disturbed Youths

A father-and-son team, exorcising personal ghosts, brings passion to a drama of survival in “Thanksgiving Cries” at the Flight Theatre in the Complex in Hollywood.

The production takes junkies and twisted kids and makes us care about them. The subject is ripe for indulgence because the material is so close to the bone of director Bruce Malmuth and his son and co-writer Evan James. But instead of melodramatic excess, they have created a sinewy, compassionate play that could be called the “Rocky” of juvenile hall.

Set on a Thanksgiving in L.A.’s San Fernando Juvenile Detention Facility, the action centers on a counselor and three violent, disturbed kids. The counselor’s ordeal is the thinly fictionalized story of the star, 27-year-old James, whose tender and dynamic performance captures his own rebirth from the ravages of cocaine addiction.

Malmuth, who watched his son nearly die on the back streets of Hollywood, does not intrude his own character into the drama. This is not a father-son play. Malmuth frames the momentum around a trio of psychologically maimed kids and their angel of mercy.

The surly youths are divided, too neatly, among a Latino (a pesky Jose Lozano), a black (joltingly dangerous George Tillman) and a white (tremulous Eric Close). But that schematic format is salvaged by the trio’s vivid portrayals. The principal roles are double cast.

Malmuth’s experience directing big movie thrillers (“Nighthawks,” “Hard to Kill”) is reflected in short bursts of voltage. Chief among them, during a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, is James’ tortured flashback as a cokehead.

The production is not perfect. The set is grungy instead of artfully dingy (but check out that succulent turkey). And the last scene with a Nurse Ratched-type administrator (Virginia Paris) is a drag because she’s a cartoon. But never mind. The show survives. This brotherhood is visceral stuff.

“Thanksgiving Cries,” the Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, Fridays - Sundays, 8 p.m., Saturdays, 10:30 p.m., Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Nov. 24. $12-$14. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

The Human Side of Freud and Jung

Talk about a play of ideas. A drama exploring the collaboration and eventual friction between Freud and Jung sounds daunting. How can you dramatize all that talk about sexuality and dreams?

Psychiatry professor-turned playwright Harvey Mindess resolves the dilemma with several human details in his surprisingly touching and accessible “Freud, Jung & Anna,” at the Harman Avenue Theatre in Hollywood.

The Anna is Freud’s devoted adolescent daughter (Christine Kaye, in four other roles as well) who glides around her father’s famous overstuffed couch in a coming-of-age story that bridges the intellectual fireworks.

Instead of being awed by the material, Mindess and director Roberta Mahan nimbly telescope the seven-year friendship of the analysts (1906-1913) in an actors’ ping pong of serve and counter-serve. The rift between Freud (a burly, sweetly dictatorial Joseph Whipp) and his admiring protege Jung (the subtly complex Michael Wolf Muser) is painful and intriguingly dramatized.

Besides voluminous correspondence and family records, the playwright also utilized a personal experience with Jung. According to Mindess, when he was a Jungian student in the mid-’50s, he once encouraged Jung, then 80, to share his sentiments about Freud.

Naturally, there are dream sequences, which are well-handled. The dominant experience is more intellectual than emotional, but it’s an unpretentious adventure into the minds of giants whose dilemmas render them human.

“Freud, Jung & Anna,” Harman Avenue Theatre, 522 N. La Brea, Fridays - Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 27. $12.50-$15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours.

A ‘Dream’ of Rural Whittier in the ‘30s

In the poetic drama “Clare’s Dream,” at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood, the sense of time and place is so pervasive and lulling that the characters seem to be under glass, as in a diorama.

Playwright Robin Sherwood portrays a young woman fighting for her share of life, art and the family farm in rural Whittier in 1936. The play is her paean to that period and to a woman who breaks free to be a writer. Her imperfect domineering father (the Richard Mulligan look-alike Albert Stratton) and pie-baking mom (an endearing Alexandra Berlin) are tintypes from the family album. Robert W. Zentis’ interior set and Michael Gilliam’s lighting evoke the nostalgic past.

The production is a curiosity: fragile, motionless, airless, almost bloodless. It’s heartfelt, and Sherwood is earnestly appealing, but Deborah LaVine’s staging lacks urgency and pulse.

“Clare’s Dream,” the Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, Thursdays - Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Nov. 3. $15-$20. (213) 650-8507. Running time: 1 hour, 5 minutes.

An All-Female ‘Lear’ at Powerhouse

Women have played male roles in Shakespeare before, but usually with a single lustrous figure like Sarah Bernhardt or Judith Anderson. But now comes a real gender-twister: an all-female “King Lear,” performed by the New Women’s Repertory Company at the Powerhouse in Santa Monica.

Much more of this gender-blind casting and we’ll be back to Will’s day, when men and boys always played the roles of women. The ultimate turnabout was inevitable, a nice signal that boundaries of gender sometimes don’t matter, given characters complex enough.

The production is competent but moderately grueling. Designer Sarah Norman’s costumes and Garth Hemphill’s sound effects are enriching, but most of the diction is rhythmically flat. However, the cast blends so well into the male roles (as well as the female ones) that you forget they’re actresses.

Lisa Wolpe’s battered Lear is daunting, and Catherine McDonough (who doubles as Cordelia) is a flavorful Fool. The director, oddly enough, is a man , Scott Rogers, as is the fight director, Stuart Rogers, whose slashing choreography is the show’s highlight. These women fight like bloody men.

“King Lear,” the Powerhouse , 3116 2nd St., Santa Monica, Thursdays - Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Oct. 20. $10-$15. (213) 392-6529. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

Five One-Acts at the Shark Club

Downtown L.A.’s newest fun palace, the Shark Club (formerly Myron’s Ballroom and Vertigo), is experimenting with theater: five one-acts about lust, madness and desire called “Cab Drivers and Chocolate Milk.”

The results, under Betsy Faith Thomas’ direction, are mixed. Perhaps the producers should throw out the crazed material (the second act) and stick to situations that feel at home in a bar. This is environmental theater with a shot glass. The whole stage is a watering hole, complete with an aquarium, against which the players unfold their cons and dreams.

You sit a few feet away, drinks on black tables etched against turquoise walls. A gorgeous brunette approaches the bar, and in the show’s best skirmish (Bill Tetreault’s “Then”) the lascivious, gleaming Susan Fassig uncoils her fangs on the ill-prepared Scott Thomson, a husband on the lam. It’s that kind of bar.

“Cab Drivers and Chocolate Milk,” the Shark Club, 1024 S. Grand Ave , Tuesdays - Thursdays, 8 p.m. Ends Oct. 10. $10 (complimentary buffet). (213) 882-4433. Running time: 2 hours.

‘Rainbows’ a Sodden ‘Hatful of Rain’ Sequel

Michael V. Gazzo’s “A Hatful of Rain” (1955) was acclaimed for its frightening power. It was one of the first commercial plays to deal realistically with drug addiction. Now, 36 years later, Gazzo has written and directed a sequel, “A Hatful of Rainbows,” at the Tiffany in West Hollywood. It’s a bomb.

Gazzo is reportedly reworking the play, which has been updated to 1965 and features only one carryover character, the drug addicted Johnny Pope (J. Cosmo Longo looks right but acts woodenly). You sure miss Pope’s old family. The other characters here are trash, a cokehead/hooker named Rainbow (Catherine Case) and a repulsive drug dealer (Thom Bosco). You don’t care about them because you don’t get inside them.

The naturalistic style is still present and Johnny Pope is still a haunted man, but otherwise this is not a sequel but a hangover. The problem is the writing. Gazzo relies on exposition instead of showing character. Johnny Pope is never dramatized. He talks and glowers.

“A Hatful of Rainbows,” Tiffany Theatre, 8532 Sunset Blvd., Thursdays - Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Nov. 3. $18.50. (213) 289-2999. Running time: 2 hours.