Stage Reviews : ‘Prostitute’: Dated Sartre

Rest assured. The grammatical gender error in La Nouvelle Theatre Francaise is intentional.

It is part of producer Susan Wiegand’s one-woman campaign against what she perceives to be sexism in grammar. But you also know, as you read past her producing company’s name (Susan Wiegand et famille ) and find that La Nouvelle Theatre is dedicated to “bringing French theater to a town that couldn’t care less,” that it’s politics with a sense of humor.

More humor than you’ll find in the company’s first venture: a revival of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “The Respectful Prostitute” at the Tracy Roberts Studio in Beverly Hills. This 1946 play took itself seriously then and takes itself seriously now, and even though there have been changes in the South since Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, there have not been enough of them.

The Ku Klux Klan is still with us, so are good ol’ boys and so is the mistreatment of black Americans. Which means that Sartre’s fantasy about a hooker coerced into giving false testimony about an assault by a black man in order to shield a white one is not out of its time.

It is only the tone of the play that is. Translated by Lionel Abel, this “Prostitute” is wisely set in 1946, but sounds like something out of Tennessee Williams, sans finesse.

There is something too blatant about the story of Lizzie McKay (Kimberly Chase), the New York prostie who rolls into a Southern town and hooks up with a good-looking guy named Fred (Macaulay Bruton), only to find out that all he wants is to get Lizzie to sign a paper incriminating a black man (William Barker) wrongly accused of trying to rape her.

Fred is a sledgehammer, the brutish son of a senator (Linden Chiles) whose own approach to the situation is much more suave than Fred’s, if still too obvious. But Sartre has Lizzie fall for the senator’s line and live to regret it.

The piece today ends up being a transparent attack on the American system of injustice by a writer whose Communist leanings made him predictably anti-American. Had the play been dramaturgically stronger, one might be more willing to forgive its wrong-headed inspiration. But it’s not, and it is director Greg Mullavey and his actors who make the production as watchable as it is.

Most watchable among them is the mercurial Chase, who takes on a variety of intriguing personas in the traumatic course of the play, and only has trouble seeming dumb enough to fall for the senator’s ploy. (Sartre’s problem, not hers.)

Chiles plays on all the wily stops he can as the practiced senator, but again, it’s not easy to make such stereotypical dialogue sound persuasive. Bruton nicely captures Fred’s deceptive mix of good looks and callous instincts, and Barker’s natural sweetness translates into a kind of passivity of speech and posture that are on target for a hounded man who has no reason to expect he’ll live.

Designer Keith Maxwell has created a square, white room that, under Robert Bilodeau’s hot lights, is stifling in its sterility. But back to the original company statement: Should we care more about French theater in Los Angeles? Of course we should, but it needs to be fresher than this. The play creaks, even if the production doesn’t.

“The Respectful Prostitute (La Putain Respecteuse),” Tracy Roberts Theatre, 141 S. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills. Fri.-Sat., 8:30 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m. Ends Sept. 20. $10; (213) 856-8905). Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.