STAGE REVIEWS : ‘Triskaideka’ Brings Good, Bad to the Hudson Theatre

A theater festival of one-acts at the Hudson Theatre calling itself “Triskaideka” (Greek for 13) is also suggesting that it is this summer’s substitute for the Padua Hills Playwrights’ Festival currently on hiatus. And, indeed, many of Padua’s usual suspects are involved in this three-evening bill of 13 new or nearly new American one-acts.

Each one starts with Michael Arabian in John O’Keefe’s “The Magician,” a spare, tense monologue by a sinister masochist who has pushed his wife into adultery with a stranger met at a party. Very still and with assorted cue cards, Arabian gives an immaculate, erotic account of O’Keefe’s startling blow-by-blow of the consummation he has encouraged, but that wounds him first and deepest.

It sets a tone. The rest of each evening consists of four new plays. Monday’s series is wildly uneven, but Lynn Manning’s potent “Shoot,” a coiled manifesto on the politics of power in unusual hands, makes up for the weakness of the entries that precede it. Directed by Roxanne Rogers with economy and precision, “Shoot” is an object lesson in false assumptions.

The blind author forcefully plays Donny, a man without sight, shopping for a gun. Not only is the pawnbroker he goes to (John Nesci) willing to sell him the weapon, but Donny won’t hesitate to use it, as a later street scene with his pal Charles (John Freeland Jr.) makes clear. So who’s so-called disabled?

“Shoot” is as compact and deadly as the “sweet nickel-plated nine-millimeter” its protagonist packs. And it doesn’t hurt that Manning, a poet and judo champ headed for Barcelona’s Paralympic Games, has immense presence on stage.

Tina Preston has plenty of presence too, but her solo appearance in Harvey Perr’s “The Love Song of Tommy Joe” is scuttled by a delivery so subdued and subtle that, even in a theater as intimate as the Hudson, it’s almost impossible to follow--or was last Monday.

Martha is a woman of a certain age who sometimes pretends to be a man named Tommy Joe with aspirations to a career in Nashville or a life in California. It’s a slender but cleverly written look at identity whose ironies might fly if director Michael Sargent would make sure one could hear it.

The remaining plays--Rachel Powell’s “Pick an Apple” and Greg Chandler’s “The Hurricane Party”--are distinguished only for being all that the others are not: determined to make a noise, preferably meaningless. “Apple,” staged by L. Zane, is an attempt to carve up traditional family values. “Hurricane Party,” directed by series associate producer Kristin Coppola, mistakes prurient jokiness and family eccentricities for a play.

Wednesday’s series offers far more balanced examples of good writing, from Naomi Iizuka’s “Crazy Jane,” a blunt patchwork of monologues by four offbeat women (played by Kate Malin, Marcie Hoffman, Fran Harrison, Katherine Donahue and staged by Maria Mileaf) and linked by a fascination with Vermont, to a couple of mysterious two-handers: Joseph Goodrich’s “Senor,” focusing on a hitchhiker and the man who gives him a ride--and Barry Jay Kaplan’s “Love in the Afternoon” about the dynamics of dalliance that turn into something rich and strange.

Both “Senor” and “Love” are well modulated by directors Rogers and Philip Charles MacKenzie respectively, and, despite a cinematic rather than theatrical take on “Senor,” both plays reveal depth and vigor in the writing.

The evening’s concluding piece, “Elsie,” written by Faye Hess and inspired by a true incident, is loosely put together and yet hypnotic. Staged by Coppola, it tracks the moral isolation of the titular schoolgirl who commits an inadvertent serious crime.

She is played with grace by Katie Brown, and William Dennis Hunt’s bullying sheriff is scary, but Myriam Tubert’s Gram is erratic and too-thickly accented.

The pieces are hampered by having to be performed on the unstruck set of “Telegram From Heaven” (which occupies the theater’s Thursday-Sunday slot).

Connecting them all is master of ceremonies T-Grey Parker, who sets up the titles for each piece, his python Rassputin firmly wrapped around him. A real python, yes. All’s fair in war and festivals.

“Triskaideka,” Hudson Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Mondays-Wednesdays, 7:30 p.m. Ends Aug. 26. $15 for one bill, $25 for two, $30 for three; (213) 460-2893, (213) 856-4249. Running time all nights: 3 hours.