Search for Identity in ‘Boys’ Play’ at the Hudson

Coming of age can be hell. Unless, that is, you have a best friend. Unless, of course, that best friend is running a scam on you. Introverted, insecure Joe is proud as he can be that Tom, the high school big man on campus, has taken him under his wing. He doesn’t know Tom has his reasons.

Joe thinks they’ve come into the woods for some late-night teen male bonding in Jack Heifner’s “Boys’ Play” at the Hudson Theatre. But there’s no beating of drums or affirmations.

These are kids in middle America, maybe more naive than their coastal counterparts.

Joe’s family is rigidly Baptist, and he’s feeling his oats for the first time with big shot Tom. Tom bemoans the jerk his divorced mother is seeing, and the absent father who lied to him about his exploits as a pilot. Tom is ready to fly himself, anywhere, any way.

The play might be as slight as it sounds, and out of touch with today’s youth culture, but these are farm country kids and their world is small. And Heifner has a couple of surprises in store. The bright light of swamp gas floating over the lake might not be what it seems--at least, Tom says, not according to an elderly black couple who used to live in a nearby shack. He wants to find out if they were right, and brought Joe along as his alibi.

Some find it in rock music, some in gangs. Tom and Joe think they may find it swimming after the shimmering lights of their imagination toward an unknown future.

Director Don Amendolia maintains the simple quality of the piece, without frills or histrionics, and finds the energy of teen-age parrying. Tuc Watkins as Tom, and Tyler Hansen as Joe, are well past the boys’ age of 16, but in deft performances both manage to make the viewer forget the fact, particularly Hansen, whose air of wonder belongs to Joe’s age and the locale.

“Boys’ Play,” Hudson Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 10:30 p.m. Ends July 25. $15; (213) 600-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Evans’ ‘Me & Her’ Freshens Period Shtick

“Me & Her,” at Friends & Artists Theatre, is called Mitchel Evans’ tribute to the great clowns of stage and screen. It’s more than that. It’s a tribute to Evans’ own talents, and the care and affection with which he makes a lot of period shtick seem fresh.

Along with cohort Donya Giannotta, Evans transmutes mime bits involving a revolving ladder, a recalcitrant broom and a lifeless body (Giannotta) with a mind of its own, into late-night gold. There is good reason for keeping this art alive: It never tires, is always surprising, and still gets honest, deep-throated laughs.

The pieces that follow in Evans’ program, “Water” and “Air,” are experimental mime performed in half-light, both of which are hypnotic in their gentle beauty. Evans ends his show with a funny short take on that Count from Transylvania. A gem of a late-night show.

“Me & Her,” Friends & Artists Theatre, 1761 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz. Saturdays, midnight. Ends Aug. 1. $5; (213) 664-0680. Running time: 1 hours, 15 minutes.

‘Twelfth Night’ in an Outdoor Setting

The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum specializes in Shakespeare, and its productions of the Bard usually have a solid core. The current “Twelfth Night” is no exception, with a number of distinctive performances, and clear-cut direction by Ellen Geer.

Geer has a facility for making Shakespeare’s poetry sound natural, a quality not always found with American actors. She also knows instinctively how to make best use of the theater’s outdoor setting, with entrances and exits often made from the surrounding woods. Her staging is especially effective in this production.

Effective also are most of the central performances. Susan Angelo’s Viola is a delight, buoyant and energetic, and, disguised as Cesario, a little scrappy. Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian, played by Zook Norman, matches her elan. They even look as though they could be twins and speak the language beautifully.

Jon Beshara is a volatile, fiery Orsino in an individualized performance that rings true, and Melora Marshall’s Olivia runs a giddy gamut from bubbling to distraught with much humor. The vaudevillian byplay between Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Laurence Drozd) and Sir Toby Belch (George McDaniel) is a bell-ringer.

The supporting company varies, as always in a large cast, but most are on the button. The one disappointment is Louis Dezseran’s Malvolio. He gets his laughs, but at the expense of falling into low comedy, with Barrymore snorts and trilled Rs, and shameless overplaying.

“Twelfth Night,” Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. Sundays, 5 p.m. Ends Sept. 13. $12; (310) 455-3723. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

‘Canteen’ Based on Fitzgerald Stories

Director-writer Noah Stern has a clever idea going for his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby stories: update the stories progressively from their original ‘30s through succeeding decades, the last taking place today. Nothing has changed, is the statement.

“The Hobbywood Canteen,” played out on a soundstage at Culver Studios, proves that clever ideas don’t always work for the best. The setting is perfect, with huge studio light illuminating the action, and Stern’s direction is bright and moves the four pieces at a fine pace.

The supporting actors (John Coppola, Kevin Skousen, Willo Hausman, Ron King and Jason Hawkins) are all good doubling as all the stereotype writers, producers and hangers-on, but the spark of the evening is Rob Wininger’s Pat Hobby, rocketing in and out of the traps Fitzgerald’s hack screenwriter set for himself. It’s a gem of a performance, in which Wininger begins in the ‘30s at age 49, and gets younger with each decade until, at the end, he’s in his early 20s, looking just right at each age, without the help of makeup.

The problem is that the stories don’t hold up as well without the Fitzgerald flavor. The first one, like the whiskey that was Fitzgerald’s downfall, is served straight and potent. Those that follow seem diluted, as unsatisfying as Perrier.

The statement would have been the same if Fitzgerald’s voice had not been abandoned.

“Hobbywood Canteen,” Culver Studios, Washington and Ince boulevards, Gate 2, Stage 10, Culver City. Thursdays-Sundays, 8:30 p.m. Ends July 12. $12; (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

‘Lucy’s,’ ‘Dodo Bird’ on Third Street Bill

Elizabeth Karlin’s “Lucy’s Last Date,” the opener in this pairing of one-acts at Third Street Theatre, is a slight but engaging encounter between an overweight spinster (Susan Peretz) at a Florida motel, and the older black man (Johnny Ray McGhee) who tries to defer her headlong flight in an impossible romantic dream. The performances are fine under Joseph Ragno’s direction, but the play’s length defeats its size.

The second play, Emanuel Fried’s “The Dodo Bird,” holds the substance of the evening in its brutally honest depiction of troubled blue-collar foundry workers. Eddie Jones is wonderful as the narrow-minded Bull, who wants to get rid of the world’s dodo birds. Director Robert Burgos goofs mightily, though, by allowing Anthony Caldarella, as Bull’s alcoholic target DoDo, to give an outrageously self-indulgent Method performance. He uses a host of tics and willies that he abandons completely (and incomprehensibly) for a big final aria, downstage in a spotlight, whining his words with gestures to match.

“Dodo Bird” has the earmarks of a good play, but it’s hard to tell from this production.

“Lucy’s Last Date” & “The Dodo Bird,” Third Street Theatre, 8140 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles. Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Indefinitely. $12; (213) 852-0614. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.