Another One of Those Wacky ‘Days’ From Sitcom of Life

Everything is going wrong for Josh Chamberlin, today anyway. To begin with, a filler sketch he wrote for a TV retro teen music show has upset a viewer. Josh not only had Thomas Jefferson’s mother interrupting his writing of the Declaration of Independence, but she did it with a Jewish accent. You don’t put down motherhood, mac!

But the cartridge from the viewer’s high-powered rifle that shatters Josh’s skylight window and wounds him (minimally) seems to be the least of his problems. It’s “One of Those Days,” played out with much incident and lighthearted trauma in Rod Parker’s sitcom-flavored play at the Matrix Theatre.

Josh is coincidentally trying to soothe the troubled romantic waters that threaten to engulf his paraplegic neighbor Shelly (Scott Jaeck); entertain his ne’er-do-well father (Richard Kuss), who has dropped in for a visit; re-establish his relationship with his estranged wife (Eileen Seeley), who arrives to announce her pregnancy; pacify his television producer (Dorien Wilson), who’s playing the sniper for publicity; and ignore the born-again Christian detective (Rudy Ramos), who believes saving Josh’s soul takes priority over saving his life.

This sort of potpourri usually happens only on TV, which is this play’s natural habitat. Parker’s script is funny and frantic, and Don Amendolia’s direction has a firm grip on the pace that makes it work as well as it does. Victoria Petrovich’s detailed Gotham pad, Michael Gilliam’s realistic lighting and Peter Stenshoe’s sound design provide a fine setting for this theatrical rhinestone.

The cast couldn’t be better, particularly Robert Curtis-Brown, whose Josh is Everyman inarticulate. His charm and fine comic timing make the evening.

“One of Those Days,” Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 and 7:30. Ends July 29. $17.50-$19.50; (310) 289-2999. Running time: 2 hours.

‘Life,’ Death in All of Its Incongruity

Vicki Juditz is a born storyteller. In her recent “Flying to the Moon From Ozone Park,” she detailed her warmhearted friendship with a young Asian woman making the uneasy transition from Old World to New.

Now, in “Life After Life,” at the Burbage Theatre, she leads her audience through a transition of her own. When Juditz moved into her first New York apartment, she invited her parents for the Christmas holidays, but the event was shattered by her father’s massive coronary in Penn Station.

Don’t get the wrong idea. This is not another performer at a wailing wall, laying bare her woe. Under Alan Kirschenbaum’s gentle direction, Juditz has other business on her mind, and some of it is monkey business. What sets her writing, and her performance, apart is her sense of humor, and an eye for the incongruous and ridiculous.

Her words listen well, and would certainly read as well, but her inflections, her command of the way others speak, and her ability to make a pause seem like a sly wink, are a good portion of the enchantment of her storytelling. Lines like “My father’s family doesn’t speak to itself” only hint at Juditz’s colorful insights.

She doesn’t stop at kidding funereal rituals in backwater Pennsylvania. After moving to California, she heads to the Glendale Galleria to buy presents for a later Christmas for her mother, but gets lost and winds up at Forest Lawn, which is totally at the mercy of her wit. But in the final analysis, Juditz has something very serious to say about the value of tradition and heritage, and her stylish approach says it very clearly.

“Life After Life,” Burbage Theatre, 2230 Sawtelle Blvd., West L.A. Saturdays-Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends July 12. $12; (310) 478-0897. Running time: 1 hour, 5 minutes.

War Games in ‘Rank’ Lack Real Firepower

Just when you thought there was no unused incident to write a macho military play about, playwright Gregg Z. Ostrin comes up with disastrously misguided war games played out in the shadow of the Berlin Wall in 1961 in “Rank and File” at Hudson Theatre.

It’s still the same play warmed over. The honest, intelligent lieutenant (Joe Culp), the by-the-book new private (Tim Omundson), the out-of-control, bitter misfit (Charles Bailey-Gates), the dyed-in-the-wool old major (Michael Fairman) and the evil captain who causes all the trouble (Michael DellaFemina)--they’re all old friends. So are the pliable German hussy who wants to go to America (Taunie Vrenon) and the real good guy and soldier who shouldn’t get killed, but does (Tom Verica).

James Paradise’s direction hasn’t infused any energy into most of the play, and the monumental sound design by T. Baker Rowell and Kristin Coppola fills long blackouts but overpowers everything else. Culp, Bailey-Gates, Vrenon and Verica try their best to rise above the little filmic snippets of scenes, but they just don’t have enough to chew on.

“Rank and File,” Hudson Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends June 24. $12; (213) 660-TKTS. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

Updated ‘Misanthrope’ Stumbles Over Verse

A misanthrope hates or mistrusts everyone else. Sounds like a generic Hollywood type. What a snazzy idea it would be to update Moliere’s “The Misanthrope” and set it among the climbing, grasping career animals of filmdom.

That’s exactly what adaptor Neil Bartlett has done. The idea works well, but his adaptation does not. His rhymed couplets might have passed muster if they were couched in modern colloquial, but the language is stilted. His movie hotshots refer to each other as “Madame” and “M’sieur,” and the screenwriters are writing “sonnets” for the studios. Except for a few performances, director Gordon Reinhart has not been able to overcome these problems.

What does work is making Alceste, Moliere’s sourpuss, one of those screenwriters, and his bimbo girlfriend Celimene a media superstar, wallowing in designer Loren Brame’s elegant gold-and-vanilla pad. Patrick John Hurley looks uncomfortable as Alceste, his softness at odds with his character, and his unnatural reading of the dialogue unduly highlights the rhymes. Anita Barone doesn’t have this problem as Celimene, a joyous, bouncy performance that ignores the meter to good effect.

Jerry Beal is good and grungy as Oronte, the sonnet purveyor Alceste sues for plagiarism, and Barbara Sammeth is funny turning her bitchy Arsinoe into Joan Rivers. The others are sometimes successful overriding the words, sometimes not, but Patrick McGowan and Richard Ortega stand out as prototypical Hollywood phonies Acaste and Clitandre.

“The Misanthrope,” Theatre 40, 241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m.; Sun. mats., 2 p.m. Ends June 21. $14-$17; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

Sandbox Mentality Spoils ‘shelf life’

Three siblings have lived out their lives for 30 years in an Anaheim bomb shelter. The bones of their paranoid parents, who took them there, are somewhere in the back of the shelter, along with the theater piece “shelf life” could have been.

The authors--O-Lan Jones, Andrea Stein and Jim Turner--also play the kids, and kids they still are. After three decades, their mental level still hovers around 5 years old. The points “shelf life” tries to make, about a society that refuses to change with the times, are almost obscured by the play’s atmosphere of a kindergarten on speed.

Maryedith Burrell’s direction can only try to keep the actors from bumping into each other, and that it generally does. The original “Lord of the Flies” made the same statements, with real kids playing the kids, and being more mature about what they had to say.

“shelf life,” Lex Theatre, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 10 p.m. Ends June 20. $10; (213) 463-6244. Running time: 1 hour.