Ensemble’s ‘Seagull’ Soars

“The Seagull,” like so many of Anton Chekhov’s plays, is about missed opportunities. Luckily, Marilyn Fox’s fledgling production at the Powerhouse is a case of an opportunity grasped in time.

Fox’s ensemble reportedly didn’t want to disband after their brief workshop production at the Pacific Theatre Ensemble’s storefront Venice space, and they quickly hatched a full-grown staging.

They haven’t reached the finish line, but the only thing that will stop them from getting there is the constricted three-week engagement. Every action, every moment is imbued with a sure understanding of Chekhov’s comedy-in-tragedy and of the border dividing evocative loss from melodrama--a border this cast never crosses.

Bud Leslie’s tempered, deeply wrought Treplev nimbly jumps from a younger man frozen in fear of his imperial actress-mother Irina (an icy but brilliantly shaded Gretchen Oehler) to a maturing fellow who’s going hollow just as he’s gaining fame.

Lisa Barnes’ Nina makes the jump less easily: Her shimmering youth as the girl of Treplev’s dreams is so transcendent that it’s hard to accept her as a fallen actress. Matt Mackenzie’s more seasoned author--the one Nina thinks she loves--is a masterful take on a fellow caught completely off-guard.

It’s these moments of imbalance, so crucial to Chekhov’s life view, that Fox fluidly orchestrates. Jerry Buteyn’s set provides the bare essentials, and Guido Girardi’s lights a little mood, but everything is designed to get out of the way of the actors: Melissa Hoffman’s furiously despairing Masha, Nicholas Cascone’s simpering Semyon, Cole Andersen’s too-American Sorin, Channing Chase’s lived-in Polina, Orson Bean’s wryly bemused Dorn and Walt Beaver’s salty Shamraev.

“The Seagull,” Powerhouse Theatre, 3116 2nd St., Santa Monica, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends March 14. Free, with suggested donation; (310) 392-6529. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

‘River’ a Blend of the Poetic, Mundane

Keith Antar Mason is on his way, which is one reason why he named his new, sinewy performance work at Highways, “River.” It’s his most fully developed work to date, blending the personal and epic, the poetic and mundane, the abstract and the specific with real resonance.

Mason layers his work, with each section dissolving, film-like, into the next. The river-like form vitally contrasts to the charged, variegated passages of ritualized action: A chorus (Ellis Rice, Terence Mathews and Joel Talbert), always silent or chanting, becomes a set of crucified figures; they rise, running in place; soon, they become goose-stepping marchers, and collapse into hobbled plowmen. Over this are Steve Moshier’s superb music landscapes and a kaleidoscopic set of Mason monologues, ranging from diatribes to the left of Gil Scott Heron to a reflective passage about crossing the Mississippi from a slave to free state.

The finale leaps into the present, as Mason’s late-night radio talk show host urges spiritual and sexual healing between black men and women, while Darrell Evers’ expansive design lend Mason’s stage pictures the power of a dream.

Mason has put new muscle into his running theme of the pain of the black man, but now includes a female presence (Latasha Dove). A sense of reconciliation emerges in “River,” with one terrible exception: He states--and repeats--that “what Hitler wanted to create was nothing to what we had already set into motion in this country.” Mason’s suggestion that the American slave trade of 60 million people outweighs the mass murder o six million Jews (and gays and leftists, as well) is morally indefensible and pointlessly divisive of precisely the two groups, blacks and Jews, who were at the front lines of the U.S. civil rights movement. It feels like a dare to his audience, and contradicts everything that “River” is about.

“River,” Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, Friday-Sunday, 8:30 p.m. Ends Sunday. $10; (213) 453-1755. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Acting Styles at War in ‘Tennessee Jar’

Something is getting in the way of John Lewter’s play, “Tennessee Jar,” at the St. Genesius Theatre, but it’s not really Lewter’s fault. By casting the gratingly hyperactive Lynne Cormack against the superbly understated Mark Ruffalo, director Michael Cooper has set up an unintended duel between two incompatible acting styles. Understated wins out every time.

The problem is that the story belongs to Cormack’s Millie, a physical and emotional basket case living in a Fort Lauderdale trailer home with the support of sister Joe (Rosemary Dunsmore), a real estate saleswoman. Cormack’s outlandishly actorish way of handling Millie’s mood swings swamps her character, so that when Millie gradually attaches herself to Ruffalo’s teen runaway, there’s no real emotional bonding. It makes Ruffalo’s performance all the more remarkable--he brings a deep wellspring of humor and love that only actors with a powerful instinctual core can conjure.

Lewter’s play shares Ruffalo’s sensibility, but as it introduces sideline comedy (Carol Hickey and Dirk Blocker as turbulent spouses), it meanders and loses its dramatic shape.

“Tennessee Jar,” St. Genesius Theatre, 1047 N. Havenhurst, West Hollywood, Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends March 29. $18; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours.