Grandiose ‘Beethovens’ Twists the Myth

In the current artistic recession, when a lot of small theater is small indeed, “The Beethovens,” the boisterous, sprawling new play that swirls around the lives of Ludwig van and his kin, comes off as a huge dare at a small house like the Gene Dynarski Theatre.

Like the composer himself, both director J. Kevin McMahon’s production and the psycho-biographical play by Frederick Kurth, Valerie Murray and Rebecca Pearson manage to do the virtually impossible very well, while stumbling over the basics.

“The Beethovens” depicts an artist full of rage and mirth, able to scribble off compositions galore but incapable of being a real father. Instead of marrying and child-rearing like his bourgeois brothers (ably played by a pompous Charles Carroll and a sickly Gregg Alden Koski), Ludwig essentially robs widowed sister-in-law Johanna (a deeply affecting Kristina Sanborn) of her son Karl.

With Donovan Peters as young Karl and D. C. Douglas as his older, suicidal self, the show has two good young actors able to provide what Beethoven loved most: counterpoint. Yet considering the stupendous subject matter, “The Beethovens” curiously lowers its sights, sometimes amounting to little more than a dramatic reminder that you always hurt the one you love.

Kurth is a psychoanalyst by trade (daughters Murray and Pearson helped with the dramaturgy, which still needs help), and the play has psychoanalytic fingerprints all over it. We’re meant to see the living causes for Beethoven’s furiously revolutionary music. While this adds a valuable and disturbing twist to the popular view of a mythified artist, it also ignores the intangible inner mysteries that were surely Beethoven’s major demons.

Instead, the intangibles are given flesh by Richard Grove, who, as Beethoven, brilliantly negotiates one of the most intractable assignments any actor could confront. Grove turns the tempestuous image we share of the composer into the human form of a pained lion, in which every move has a Shakespearean size and weight and vulnerability (imagine Falstaff mixed with Hamlet). McMahon’s staging is scaled to Grove’s attack, action bursting up the scaffolds of Edward E. Haynes Jr.’s highly metaphoric set or moving in fine musicalized sweeps (flawed only by Dennis Courtney’s tortured choreographic interludes). The movement and emotions tend to gum up in the play’s gears. But there’s also some very big theater here, no matter how small the house.

“The Beethovens,” Gene Dynarski Theatre, 5600 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 9. $15-$17; (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Shanley One-Acts Hold Roots of ‘Moonstruck’

Is there a more unashamed romantic in the American theater than John Patrick Shanley? In his world, people actually believe that love can bloom under a lunar gaze.

In “Welcome to the Moon,” six brief Shanley one-acts at the Chamber Theatre, you can see the roots of his “Moonstruck” script, despite the Artist Theatre Group’s unromantic production.

The wooden nature of most of the performances only underscores the sense that the pieces are more exercises than fully developed scenes. Then again, few actors could make anything out of such sophomoric fables as “Down and Out,” about a poet and his love, or “A Lonely Impulse of Delight,” about a man and his mermaid.

Shanley’s undimmed faith in love connects the sextet, and burns brightest in the opener, “The Red Coat,” though Tony Monte is more in the moment than Jennifer Miller. Strangely, only two of the pieces are credited with a director (Monte for “Delight” and Kirk Patrick Jones for the titular play).

“Welcome to the Moon,” Chamber Theatre, 3759 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Universal City. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 9. $10; (213) 850-5424. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

‘King’ Offers Little Cause for Celebration

Hopefully, as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, we shall overcome. We may even overcome Nyna Shannon Andersen’s hopelessly botched musical, “King,” at the West End Playhouse.

As birthday celebrations go, this one qualifies as a wake. King’s life is dutifully laid out in a lumbering, 23-scene chronology, broken only by one of Andersen’s flavorless, repetitive songs (hampered by prerecorded music played back at slippery volume levels).

Director Andersen’s cast members wander about the dimly lit stage like characters truly in search of an author. James Darling Jr.’s King is a bland, smiling fellow who can’t stop singing about love for your neighbor. Monica McMurtry’s Coretta King at least conveys a bit of the resentment any wife of a great, consumed man must feel. Otherwise, this is a show filled with such embarrassments as David Maier’s LBJ singing a soul song about the Civil Rights Act.

“King,” West End Playhouse, 7446 Van Nuys Blvd., Van Nuys. Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Feb. 23. $12.50; (818) 765-6301. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

‘Talking’ Passes Off Remarks for Drama

“What is it that people fall in love with?”

“The whole point of American culture is to prolong childhood.”

Playwright J. Paul Porter has a wad of such questions and aphorisms, and he packs as many as he can into his acerbic comedy, “Men Talking Women Talking Men,” at the West Coast Ensemble.

In this five-member ensemble piece, centering on the rise and fall of a relationship (involving Eleanor Lind’s Annie and John Nielsen’s Caylor), remarks summing up modern life tend to substitute for comedic dialogue. Similarly, Porter’s thesis--men and women can’t communicate and love because they’re impossibly different from each other--substitutes for a play. Good comedy is interested in the exceptions to the rule; in Porter’s world, all women are driven by feelings and all men can’t listen because their hormones are screaming. Period.

The sheer fun had by Lind, Nielsen and the sparring chorus of John Marzilli, David Mark Peterson and Lori Harmon vitally distracts from the fact that they’re playing cleverly made marionettes tied to the playwright’s strings. Director Claudia Jaffee’s staging elicits a vivid chemistry among the players--individuals who don’t conform to anyone’s thesis--that’s missing from the text.

“Men Talking Women Talking Men,” West Coast Ensemble, 6240 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Feb. 2. $10; (213) 788-5900. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

‘3 By Three’ Fails to Really Catch Fire

For their trio of solo pieces titled “3 By Three,” writer-performers Neil Prussel, Aleta Menard anJ. Bau have to do a lot to warm up the cold, clammy Gascon Theatre. Bau’s childhood memoir of Pennsylvania life stokes the coals, even though Bau isn’t off book.

Prussel tries to pepper the story of his life journey from Bohemia to phone sales with rhymed verses that never take off. Menard’s self-absorbed “A Brush With Life” might better be called “Woe Is Me,” and only proves that it’s awfully difficult to paint and perform at the same time.

“3 By Three,” Gascon Theatre, Westside Fencing Center, 8735 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 1. $15; (310) 838-0294. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.