STAGE REVIEW : ‘Margins’: Reflections on Racial Stereotyping

“Writing in the Margins,” subtitled “confronting the racist devil within,” is a wide ranging, blunt-nosed reflection on racial stereotyping in the city of fire and angels.

Staged by the Dark Horses Collective, an ensemble of artists who address themes particularly endemic to L.A., the show features Asian-, Anglo-, Latino- and African-American performers, all swathed in black when they’re not exaggerating their personas as garishly costumed characters.

Jumping from the stage to the aisles and sides of a makeshift theater in a social hall at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, the performers weave a litany of personal anecdotes and class bigotry that accrue into a mound of racial sludge that draws patrons into the morass. No one walks out of this show without a touch of guilt, newfound or reconfirmed, and that’s the strength of the piece.

Unencumbered by anger and histrionics but acting instead like characters giving witness in a series of depositions, the five performers illustrate the checkerboard of racial insularity in the sealed-off communities around them. Pointedly, each ethnic group is afflicted with feelings of superiority, rapid defense mechanisms and callow slurs--a kind of Balkanization complex.

Thematically potent, the production’s weakness is its uneven acting talent and its lack of drama. None of the players interface with one another. This is theater of verbal irony and indirect assault.

The players include Luis Alfaro and Mario Martinez (who cover Arab and Jewish as well as Latino territory), Theo Fitzgerald’s African-American, Mary Ann Tamaki’s Asian-American and Nancy Taylor’s Anglo-American. But dramatically speaking, only the expressive Tamaki and the wispy, gentle Fitzgerald are gifted with theatrical presence; the others seem vaguely ungainly with only their lines to keep them afloat.

Occasionally, each stops long enough to tell a complete story, such as Tamaki’s adolescent tale of a day spent with an Anglo friend at the Bel Air Beach Club, where horrified members demanded to know how she got in, confusing her with an interloper and causing the young girl to fall over herself in apology. Scars never forgotten.

This writing isn’t “in the margins.” It can’t be that easily erased.

* “Writing in the Margins,” First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, 2936 W. 8th St., L.A., Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Ends Feb. 27. $10-$8. (213) 969-1854. Running time: 1 hour.