STAGE REVIEWS : Strong Performances Set Off ‘Boom’ at Powerhouse

Martin Zurla is a playwright of many genres. For its opening production, the Powerhouse Theatre Repertory Company has chosen his one-act ensemble “ ‘Til It All Goes Boom,” six plays about the failure of the American dream. Played over two evenings, the dramas have different directors and casts. They’re uneven, but the company displays a promising interest in theater that doesn’t stick to the middle of the road.

Zurla wears some of the genres in his collection like hand-made gloves. Others seem a little uncomfortable, and are further mismatched with their directors.

When they work, they’re entertaining and theatrical, like the plum offering of the group, “A Woman on Her Ship Who Jokes About the End of the World.” Lucy (Mickey Crocker) is a used-up Jewish comic, down on her luck and her optimism, locked in combat with her childlike grown son Aaron (Wayne Morse), and bemoaning the fact that her 1938 world has been destroyed. She and Aaron are all that are left. With no hope of an audience, Aaron frantically tries to go on broadcasting a pointless radio show, even after Lucy’s demise.

Under David Matzke’s pointed and lucid direction, Zurla’s parable about the idiocy of the Holocaust hides its truths about a doomed people behind his vaudevillian nightmare. The performances are excellent, and the writing is the most imaginative of the bunch.

Zurla’s other Holocaust piece, “Grandfather,” is about a Jewish patriarch in America who is teaching his grandson the glories of a pure race, until his wife discovers that he’s really something unbearably evil, and not at all who she believed him to be. It is untheatrical, undramatic and transparent under Sandy Kenyon’s stodgy direction, in spite of strong performances by Jack Kandel as Grandpa, Jackie Benton as his wife and young Ben Koehler as Grandpa’s mini-Hitler youth.

Most of Zurla’s titles are as lengthy as their styles are varied. For brevity’s sake, then, “A Summer Evening . . .” is the author’s Tennessee Williams-ish Southern white-trash entry, excellently brought to life by director Jon Larson. Jeanine Renshaw is another childlike creature who thinks sexual molestation is the way things are, from Dad to neighbors, and it’s a vivid performance, as is James Knobelach’s deceptively noble Vietnam friend of Dad’s, who’s taken over the household, and Carrie Stauber’s first shrewish, then sultry mother.

Eric Menyuk directs a rather ordinary gathering of Manhattan subway types in “Lady on the Wayside . . .” with energy and good detail, and Maria Pavone’s subtle change from shy spinster to romantic dreamer stands out in an all-around good cast. The title piece, “Boom,” is also ordinary, giving a purely Texan twist to the male bonding of not-as-dumb-as-he-looks Billy Buck (Daniel Moriarty) and his Korea-bound buddy Charlie (Matthew Dunn). Ellen Elphand’s direction and top-notch performances bring it to life.

In “A Boy, His Home . . .,” a young man (substitute Terrence Moriarty, far better in “Wayside”), escaping an oppressive brain surgeon father, is turned back by a kindly, kinky bum (Dennis Vero) in a bus station, but Eric Zane’s surface direction doesn’t help the play or the actors.

* “ ‘Til It All Goes Boom,” Powerhouse Theatre, 3116 2nd St., Santa Monica. Evening A: “Wayside,” “A Summer Evening . . . “ and “Ship,” Thursdays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Evening B: “Boom,” “Home” and “Grandfather,” Fridays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends July 26. $12 (both evenings, $20); (310) 392-6529. Running times: Evening A, 2 hours, 25 minutes; Evening B, 1 hour, 40 minutes.