STAGE REVIEW : S.F. Mime Troupe Brings Political Agenda to Ivar

No one has ever accused the 33-year-old San Francisco Mime Troupe of being subtle or apolitical, and its newest work, “Social Work--An Election Year Fantasy,” which opened Thursday at the Ivar Theatre in Hollywood, is just as raw, raucous, radical and riled up as its numerous predecessors.

The title of this show tells you almost all you need to know. Joan Mankin plays Phoebe Smytes, an overloaded case-worker at the Department of Social Welfare who can’t reconcile what she deals with every day (one tough case after another, not enough money to go around) with what she sees every night on the network news.

Phoebe has an active imagination and it’s not long before she/it takes on the Haves of the world in defense of the Have-Nots.

Company CEOs, mega-bankers, lumber barons, the head of the Federal Reserve, the governor and even the President are put through their paces by this Fairy Godmother to the poor. She (morally) also wrestles a particularly confused Yale Law School graduate (Michael Gene Sullivan) serving as “Presidential Adviser on Problems of the Poor” and wins. Sort of.

The show comes complete with the company’s usual garish array of theatricality, its overblown style (a kind of modern commedia), regal to ragged costumes (Lorenza Elena Marcais), its traveling band (Eric Crystal, Elliot Kavee, Dred Scott), cartoonish props, including, in “Social Work,” an alligator with its teeth in the right place.

But aside from rousing songs by Bruce Barthol and Kavee (“Steal, Murder, Lie” hits a bull’s-eye), the story is twisted to accommodate the company’s politics more than it is devised to genuinely amuse.

Daniel Chumley directs the usual suspects gleefully playing the usual multiple number of roles: Stalwarts Ed Holmes, Arthur Holden and Rebecca Klingler, joined by Sullivan, Velina Brown, Paul Taliaferro II and musicians Kavee and Scott, who seem to enjoy pretending to be actors.

But even among standards of the Mime Troupe repertoire, some pieces are more inspired than others and “Social Work,” written by Joan Holden with assorted company members, huffs and puffs, delivering well-intended ranting more than it does real fun.

Also, some venues are more suited than others to the way this company works. Since Mime Troupe artists are seat-of-the-pants street fighters, the streets are a natural habitat for their shows--ideally plazas and parks and such throng-gatherers as the Santa Monica Pier, where foot traffic is plentiful, crowds gather like sea gulls around fresh bait and, presumably, donations flow.

Indoors, it’s another matter.

At the Ivar, the spontaneity of the audience is dampened by the process of buying a ticket and stepping into a hall. And the company’s high energy and noise level tend to bounce off the walls.

In short, “Social Work,” which was sparsely attended Thursday, suffers from three things: confining environs, being less than terrific, and uncharacteristically discreet billboarding outside the theater that hardly lets anyone know it’s even there. The company truck, parked at the curb with its familiar red-star logo, helps, but it’s not enough.

Given the timeliness (if not quite the genius) of the show and the brevity of its Los Angeles run, one wishes it had taken its L.A. Cultural Affairs Department grant, which is funding these performances, and had played Plummer Park, so its message could target its most natural audience: those street and other people who might find in “Social Work” a salve for psychic wounds.

Something to think about the next time around.

“Social Work--An Election Year Fantasy,” Ivar Theatre, 1605 N. Ivar Ave., Hollywood. Today-Sunday, 2 and 8 p.m. Ends Sunday. $15 ($12 students/seniors); (213) 464-3667, (213) 664-3882, (310) 393-2923. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.