‘Soup’ Blazes a Trail Through Tangled Terrain

Robyn Mundell’s play “Traveling Bowls of Soup,” at the Met Theatre, has a way of insinuating itself into your mind--both the conscious and subconscious parts--like a playful if devilish pet that gets into your home and refuses to leave. At first, you’re not sure if you want to be around this Angst -ridden, oh-so-’90s piece for two actors and multiple characters. But soon, it’s clear that Mundell has hit upon a trail through the tangled male-female terrain that is both entertainingly ditzy, yet challenging and never pandering.

Mundell plots out a fixed triangle, in which female C (Mundell) sits between males A and B (Charley Lang, switching between the two with a dance-like precision and comic’s delight). As if A and B were magnets of equal strength, C is pulled sometimes without will or reason to one, then the other. She seems like a woman who makes her own decisions, until we hear her inner voice (Lang, for a hat trick) kick in with dialogues of pure-bred self-doubt--a mood actress Mundell especially loves.

Actually, writer Mundell has drawn a semi-quadrangle in this workshop production directed by Lang and Amy Madigan. That makes for some possibly unneeded confusion early on as you’re trying to decipher Lang’s switches. And this isn’t a show to slow down and let you catch up. Paced to the rhythms of channel surfers on a good night, Mundell’s and Lang’s performances feel plugged into a wall, absolutely on the same current as the writing. As much as the character exchanges, Mundell’s language careens from free verse to rapid volleys to conversations: A showoff quality is never too far from the surface, but it’s very easy to get hooked on this stuff.

* “Traveling Bowls of Soup,” Met Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Indefinitely. $7.50 (two for $10); (213) 957-1831. Running time:1 hour, 25 minutes.

Class Warfare in ‘Female Transport’

Even though it was written 20 years ago, Steve Gooch’s “Female Transport” is now linked to fellow Briton Timberlake Wertenbaker’s recent “Our Country’s Good” as a two-sided look at the horrendous 19th-Century shipment ( transport is too kind) of U.K. prisoners to Australian penal colonies.

Indeed, Wertenbaker might have studied Gooch’s play in order to spot what to avoid. While “Good” finds an admittedly flabby metaphor for theatermaking as a humanizing path for the dehumanized, “Transport” simply displays the victims (the women in chains below deck) and the victimizers (the men above deck). This is class war on stage, and pity those who stand in the center.

Gooch is on the left, with the women. On the right are a merciless captain (Patrick Roman Miller) and his sadistic henchman (Mark Hawkins). In between are a goodly surgeon (Alden Millikan) and a ship-boy with a tender heart (Marc Hart).

Sympathies aren’t so much revealed in either Gooch’s writing or Allison Liddi’s direction as lit up by kliegs: One of the first strong images is a Pieta- like pose of a young, weak girl (Andrea Lauren Herz) held in the arms of Earth mother-ish Madge (Christy Barrett)--and the girl’s name is Pitty. (We’re told the name comes from her being William Pitt’s illegitimate child, but we know better.)

If the working-class theater and the MGM melodrama epic have ever met, this is it--complete with vicious cat-fights, blowhard seafarers, big storms, hangings, whippings and carefully interspersed comic relief. You can almost hear the Korngold music.

Gooch, of course, has higher aspirations. But it’s hard to feel the horror of this world because of what designers Daniel Bradford (set) and Jane Lloyd (lights) have to contend with on the stage at the Complex. Since the ceiling is too low, the action on deck appears cramped and dark, making the setting below deck relatively light and spacious. They did the best they could do with the resources at hand, unlike costumer Michelle Robinson, whose fluffy outfits are absurdly clean and untorn.

The real pain and struggle is generated by Liddi’s fine cast, who form tableaux of the whole range of high and low moralities and behaviors. The other “transport” here is the change of Becky London’s feisty Charlotte into a thoughtful lover of books, or Sherry Ann Crider’s tough Sarah into a love-struck woman or Maria Spassoff’s servile Winnie into a flinty voice for “solidarity.” Kim Taylor could even broaden every delicious moment she has as Nance, the beaten firecracker of the women. The men remain cutouts, except for Hart, who knows how to act between the lines.

* “Female Transport,” The Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Wednesdays-Saturdays,8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Jan . 31. $12; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

A ‘Much Ado’ That Needs Much Work

Geoffrey Forward’s staging of “Much Ado About Nothing” for Los Angeles Shakespeare Company may be very unsuccessful, but then the play doesn’t easily lend itself to success. With its extraordinary mood swings, its dizzying alterations from romantic farce to moral drama, “Much Ado” is the Everest of the comedies, and you need people in condition for the climb.

A few cast members are ready: Tally Briggs’ flamboyant, piquant Beatrice, Eric Liddell’s fine, hilariously contradictory Benedick, and Kei Rowan-Young’s cute-to-perturbed Hero. A dangerously large number, though, are just not up for the trek. Lines, timing, the whole chemistry of 1935893870tors down, and, along with them, a play that deserves much, much more than this.

* “Much Ado About Nothing,” Richard Basehart Playhouse, 21028-B Victory Blvd., Woodland Hills. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Ends Jan . 28. Resumes Feb. 5 at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 585 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Ends Feb. 27. $20; (818) 989-7221. Running time: 3 hours, 15 minutes.

‘Hey Stupid’ Isn’t Very Bright

For a play about dim bulbs, writer-director Steven Mikulan’s “Hey Stupid” at the Olio isn’t very bright. It’s not smart, for example, to have actors chug down two pre-show cocktails (“to avoid,” say production notes, “any chance of sobriety”) when the actors going in have a weak grasp of putting across a character on stage.

It’s also not smart to set up those characters as hopeless losers in ‘50s working-class L.A., let them wander in and out of focus, and then finish with a moment of affection. If there’s a joke to the robotic numbness, it’s only made woozy when the booze kicks in--which happens just about at the time it’s clear that the play is going nowhere.

The other joke--that everyone is waiting for pal Wes on his first day out of prison, only he can’t seem to get a ride home--is enough to bring these low-life hoods together, but not enough on which to hang a play. Time, meanwhile, is filled with guys debating cigarette brands. (Besides drinking, nearly everyone smokes, filling the Olio space with secondhand fumes.)

If “Hey Stupid” wants to be about killing time--and, with work, that could be interesting--it needs to wise up.

* “Hey Stupid,” Olio, 3709 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Jan. 30. $7; (213) 667-9556. Running time: 50 minutes.