‘Indigo Blues’ Captures the Deep South

You sense the breath of originality soon enough: a lascivious saxophone wailing in the sultry air, bluesy yearnings, simmering emotions.

Discovering Judi Ann Mason’s “Indigo Blues,” as staged by Michele Martin for Mojo Ensemble at the American New Theatre, is like walking into a theater for the first time--it’s that good.

Two black sisters in rural Louisiana have just returned home from their brother’s funeral. One (an animated Tanya Boyd) is a funeral junkie, rhapsodizing about deaths and burials and particularly doting on today’s pastor (with whom she’s discreetly having an affair, as if the whole town didn’t know).

The other sister (the saner Elayn Taylor) is wise and weary, an ex-teacher with a natural gift for the blues, who once sang in clubs. Both sisters, stuck with each other all these years, have nothing in common except the sax man (Robert Gossett), whom both loved and lost 30 years earlier.

Now he’s returned, looking fine, with his horn and his silk tongue and glimmering in his silk shirt. The passion lines are drawn, but not as you would expect, and the resolution, which requires a suspension of disbelief, is achingly ironic and melancholy.

A delicate blues club ambience swells through this amazing three-character play. The actresses are flawless, submerged in characters so vital that they create a hothouse of love and treachery. Boyd’s wild, callow sister coyly vamps like a brazen imitation of Blanche DuBois. Taylor’s less flashy, more stable sister is a heartbreaker.

Not only does actor Gossett blow a few notes from an alto sax, but from behind a scrim, the mournful bars from a tenor sax (played live by talented musical composer Leslie A. Jones) propel Taylor into tremulous R&B; vocal reveries that wed this drama to the soul of the Deep South.

Erik White’s tattered parlor, Greg Gardiner’s pale lighting and Richard Larimore’s sound design all suggest apparitions from a Tennessee Williams play.

“Indigo Blues,” New American Theatre, 1540 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood . Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends June 14. $8-$15. (213) 960-1604. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

‘A Shayna Maidel’ Recovers Its Balance

Barbara Lebow’s popular post-Holocaust drama is back. A long-running hit two years ago at the Tiffany Theater (and radically revised as a TV movie, “Miss Rose White,” a few weeks ago), “A Shayna Maidel” still draws devoted audiences at Theatre East.

This production, directed by Edward Balin, is thrown off balance by the overlay of jitters in Bonnie Jean Brown’s performance as the Americanized sister, who’s nervous about greeting an unknown sister from the Holocaust.

But it’s crucially salvaged by a textured, evocative performance by Kim Brant as the alienated Polish daughter from hell, plopped down in her sister’s Manhattan apartment in early 1946.

Brant, in her dumpy clothes, is uncanny at catching her character’s broken, accented English as she wistfully searches for her immigrant Polish husband (a nice turn by Eugene Buica).

Michael Fox, who plays the women’s aging Jewish father, doesn’t speak Yiddish, but you’d never know it in his deft personification of the Eastern European Jew turned American businessman. He saved one daughter from the Nazis but left another behind with his wife (a flavorful Eve Brenner). Sallie Higgins adds a charming touch as a childhood friend in the old country.

“A Shayna Maidel,” Theatre East, 12655 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends May 31. $12.50. (818) 377-4441. Running time: 2 hours.

‘Naked’ Clothed in Emotional Intensity

A one-woman show about a woman shedding her emotional luggage--boyfriend, mother, children--through the transforming powers of her poetry sounds like a heavy evening. It is.

Written and performed by Lisa Rafel, “It’s All Right to Be Naked,” directed by Guy Giarrizzo at the Skylight Theatre, is a draining experience because the material is too insular and not that involving. Better that Rafel, a pointedly talented writer and actress, go off and do Ophelia or Lizzie Borden.

With all respect for the production--the emotionally charged shafts of alternating light through a striking set of Venetian blinds (from lighting designer Jason Berliner and set designer Robert W. Zentis), this is the kind of solo Angst --albeit more artful than most--that is beginning to sound a deafening ring in L.A. theater.

“It’s All Right to Be Naked,” Skylight Theatre, 1816 1/2 Vermont Ave., Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends June 7. $5. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 55 minutes.

Another Solo Odyssey in ‘Burning the Bush’

R ingggg!

In another woman’s solo odyssey, “Burning the Bush,” part of the “Womankind” arts festival at Highways, it’s not only all right to be naked but it’s the triumphant fulfillment of Cheri Gaulke’s metaphoric performance piece.

Gaulke, an artist-activist and pioneer in the ‘70s at the Woman’s Building, charts her flight from four generations of Lutheran clergy, complete with slides of old Dad at the pulpit and a set design featuring a quaint forest with a roughly hewn puppet of logs that become Gaulke’s flesh and the fires of sexual passion. Or something like that.

To the sound effects of crackling flames, the orgasmic conclusion enjoins everyone in the house to dutifully light a small wax candle. I couldn’t find mine--later I discovered I had been sitting on it.

Gaulke, mercifully, has a sublimely chipper style. But, again, this is self-flagellating, not very provocative material for a characteristic Highways audience of admirers who here, in any event, have found church without any Lutherans in it.

“Burning the Bush,” Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, tonight and Saturday, 8:30 p.m. $10. (310) 453-1755. Running time: 1 hour.