STAGE REVIEW : Adversity Theme of ‘Twice Blessed’

Art Metrano fell from a ladder in 1989 and suffered a “hangman’s break”--the kind of injury that kills people on the gallows.

But Metrano survived. Now the actor and comic has turned the story of his ordeal into a rambling one-man up-from-adversity tale, “Twice Blessed,” at the Hollywood Playhouse.

Metrano hired writer Cynthia Lee and director Mark W. Travis to help stage his story. Travis is one of the masters of the genre, his most relevant credit being Paul Linke’s gripping story about surviving the death of his wife, “Time Flies When You’re Alive.”

Metrano’s tale also has potentially moving moments, and he tells it with professional poise. But his memories don’t yet make much of a play. “Twice Blessed” is more of an autobiographical chat, with far too many passages that are connected only tenuously, if at all, to the script’s central incident.

Some of these passages are completely expendable. But others need expansion. For example, in 1980 Metrano was shot several times by a maniacal parking garage attendant, which sounds more heart-pounding than suddenly falling from a ladder. Yet his account of this event appears to sneak into the script almost as an afterthought, with very little reflection devoted to sizing up its impact and how it compared with his more recent trauma.

For that matter, we don’t even learn what caused the 1989 accident. Metrano avoids speculation about whether he or anyone else might have been responsible for it in some way. Not that he has to conclude that someone was to blame, but it seems only natural that he would have grappled with the issue. Some sense of that struggle would add to the drama.

As might be expected from a comic, Metrano cracks a lot of jokes and does brief vocal impressions of some of the other people he encountered during his hospitalization and other chapters of his life. A few of these moments are funny and telling, but more often they come off as strained attempts to break up the gloom. The serious stuff wouldn’t need so much breaking up if the writing were sharper. Metrano’s concluding sentiments, while no doubt intensely felt, are especially banal.

Metrano strides the stage with the help of a brace supporting one arm, and he spends part of the play attached to a “halo”--the bulky device he had to wear to keep his neck in perfect alignment while it was healing. It’s a graphic visual symbol of what he went through, much more so than the elaborately lit screens that Russell Pyle designed. Two female figures who help Metrano with the halo are black-clad and hooded, perhaps to emphasize the isolation he felt, perhaps to add a note of theatricality that’s lacking in the script.

* “Twice Blessed,” Hollywood Playhouse, 1445 Las Palmas Ave. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Indefinitely. $20-$23. (213) 480-3232. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.