‘Catechism’ a Truthful Look at Addiction

Vincent J. Cardinal’s “The Colorado Catechism,” at Coast Playhouse, is a substance rehab story with a slight difference. Although its two mismatched protagonists do talk a good deal about the snares of addiction and the emotional torture of getting clean, the labyrinthine path of their slowly entwining relationship does predominate, to somewhat of an advantage.

High school teacher Donna (Amy Van Nostrand), who married a student baseball player, is going through her third session at an isolated Colorado rehab center. Her big secret is why her 6-year-old son was taken away from her after the junior jock skipped out. Ty (Tim Daly) is a successful Manhattan portrait painter whose yuppie managers have sent him to the center to protect their investment.

If Cardinal’s script looks like a television movie in embryo, mostly due to Ty’s expository narrations, if some of the humor comes from artful one-liners, if Ty’s politically correct final speech puts high art at a lower priority than sobriety, so be it. The play has truth when Ty and Donna are face-to-face, never becomes maudlin and has honest affection for the strengths and flaws that pull the couple together.

Deborah Raymond and Dorian Vernacchio’s realistic setting, with its impression of a vast Colorado horizon beyond the center’s farmhouse, effectively places the action at a great distance from Ty’s and Donna’s natural habitats, and it is lovingly lit by Joe Morrisey. It’s the right framework for the displacement in their lives, thoughtfully amplified by the energetic, astute direction of Remi Aubuchon.

Aubuchon even manages, through brisk tempos, to take the onus off Ty’s overwritten monologues, and Daly manages to get past them without being anywhere near as self-conscious as the writing.

The script and the performances find their core in the no-man’s land between Donna’s gradually building strength and will to win her son back, and Ty’s struggle to put behind him the boozy, drugged life he led with Artie, the gay man who took him off the streets at 16 and handed him a career. As Donna says, their achievement is the rehab goal of being comfortable, not with who you are, but with letting others know who you are.

This is not a love story, except on the surface, but the detailed shadings and vivid undercurrents Daly and Van Nostrand give their characters make it seem like one.

* “The Colorado Catechism,” Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 & 7 p.m. Ends March 7. $ 17.50-$20. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

‘Mine’ a Tragic Coming-of-Age Saga

It used to take people longer to grow up--before two world wars took away our innocence--and it wasn’t always to their advantage. Awareness of this is at the core of Ken Prestininzi’s “Mine,” the first of two plays on one program at the New One-Act Theatre Ensemble.

Prestininzi sets his play in a mining town in 1909, an era not noted for its rural sophistication. Jason and his sister, Izzy, have inherited a mine, which Jason runs. But he’s a very young man, who is just growing out of the womb of childhood friendship that has bonded him with Izzy and his best friend, Calvin. Calvin, although he works for Jason at the mine, has bossed the trio since they were small and is Jason’s hero.

Enter Christine, a calm, fairly together young woman who has won Jason’s heart, and the structure that has held the trio together begins to crumble. The eventual tragedy that follows Jason’s and Christine’s marriage is not theirs, but belongs to blustering Calvin and his juvenile attempts to keep away from Izzy and her “mud-baby” voodoo dolls, which draw him closer to his eventual doom.

“Mine” is a simple play, direct in intent and effective in its play on the emotions. Director Tracy Ward’s sense of movement, both physical and emotional, bolsters the honest period aura and informs the delicate balance of emotional power between her actors.

David Conner and Steve Morgan Haskell are excellent as Jason and his buddy, men who are still little boys inside. Eva Burgess has moments of mystery and youthful petulance as Izzy, and Coleman Hough’s cool maturity is just right for Christine.

The second play, Gary Jacobelly’s unfortunately titled “Walking Down the Fellahin Streets With a Tiger’s Head on Your Back,” is based on an incident involving the founders of the ‘50s Beat Movement. It concerns murder, hustling gays, and the women who exist only on the fringes of the Beats’ self-serving, self-involved pseudo-poetical existentialism. The characters talk in the phony, high-flown style of the genre, and in the beginning the play looks as if it might be a campy satire of its subject. But that’s before it becomes self-conscious about it.

Director Tim Hanson and most of his actors have the same problem, and only Nicole Farmer as the hero’s girlfriend and Mathew Blair as a nerdy hanger-on manage to give their roles the honesty the play requires.

* “Mine” & “Walking Down the Fellahin Streets With a Tiger’s Head on Your Back,” New One-Act Theatre Ensemble, 1705 N. Kenmore Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends March 6. $5-$10; (213) 666-5550. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

David Mamet’s Don Juan in Hell

David Mamet’s “Bobby Gould in Hell,” at the Flight Theatre, follows his “Speed-the-Plow” Hollywood producer into an interrogation room in Purgatory. Mamet takes a leaf from Shaw, allowing womanizing Bobby, his ex-lover (summoned from above to testify) and his Interrogator (the Devil, or his surrogate), to verbalize their views on the actions of this Sunset Strip Don Juan.

For the first two-thirds of the play the viewer, and the actors, can revel in pure Mamet, with his crisp, rhythmic dialogue and his misogynistic view of the War Between Men and Women. Mamet’s writing is funny, brutally frank and very theatrical. Then, suddenly, he starts to apologize for his attitudinizing and his one joke misses its punch line in a gooey fade-out.

This production’s young company has a firm grip on the Mamet style, and director Carlos Papierski pays close attention to the rhythms of Mamet’s words. He also plays Bobby well, but with a restraint that keeps him from totally getting Gould. Alix Goodwin is strong as Bobby’s ex, pushy and obsessed with macho injustice, and Victor Khodadad has some very funny moments as the Interrogator’s Assistant. Adam Paul almost steals the show as the Interrogator, with sharp comic timing, an ease with the difficult lines, and a fine sense of irony.

* “Bobby Gould in Hell,” Flight Theatre, 6472 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Ends Sunday. $10; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour.

‘Pearls and Marlowe’ a Chandler Duo

Like the other ghosts of filmdom’s Golden Age, before the decline of Hollywood, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe seems doomed to wander Los Angeles’ dark streets forever. His current incarnation in Robert G. Egan’s “Pearls and Marlowe,” at the Burbage Theatre, brings back two of Chandler’s intricate, fascinating stories, both about pearls, both following Marlowe as he stumbles his way through the maze of man’s (and woman’s) greed and lust.

The production is of special interest to Marlowe fans, hungry for Chandler’s full-blooded characterizations and the gentle humor of Marlowe’s sometimes unwitting success in solving his cases. Although the script depends a great deal on narration, director Michelle Truffaut mixes a semi-choral staging with off-hand readings that serve the style well. If her tempos are frequently sluggish, her sense of style is impeccable.

Her actors are also onto the heartbeat of the genre. Van Quattro’s sly sense of humor as Marlowe works well, and a supporting cast of fine character players in multiple roles gives the staging body. Vivien Straus and Elizabeth Cava as slovenly ‘40s broads, Hayne Bayle as an ethereal fishing village type and a sharp detective, and Don Boughton as numerous colorful characters, are particularly handy at their craft.

* “Pearls and Marlowe,” Burbage Theatre, 2330 Sawtelle Blvd., West L.A. Thursdays, 8 p.m.; Fridays-Saturdays, 9 p.m. Ends Feb. 27. $15; (310) 478-0897. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

Rabble-Rousing ‘Failure to Disperse’

Daniel Matmor’s “Failure to Disperse” outlines a night in an L.A. jail cell during last year’s riots. One of the inmates is homeless, one started a fire, two broke the curfew, one is a loony West Indian, and the rest failed to disperse their demonstration on police order.

This production at Hollywood Actors Theater is filled with capable performances and tight direction by the playwright. It’s also filled with anger in a time that cries out for sanity, and can’t escape its cliche of men from different backgrounds (the streets of South-Central and East L.A., the pleasure domes of Beverly Hills, and oddly the cobblestones beside the Thames) from looking like every other prison drama that’s ever been written.

Nothing new is yelled out that hasn’t been yelled out during the last year. This rabble-rouser of a play seems bent on fanning anger rather than peace, violence rather than mature solutions and mayhem rather than order.

* “Failure to Disperse,” Hollywood Actors Theater, 1157 N. McCadden Pl., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 10:30 p.m. Ends March 13. $10; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Mild Monologues in ‘White Trash’

Michael Shaffer’s collection of character monologues (co-written with Marty Mills Shaffer) is a flattering nod to performers who have paved this particular road. However, his “White Trash,” at the Complex, doesn’t have the rich detail and observant humor of Eric Bogosian’s writing, nor the outlandish honesty in Whoopi Goldberg’s pieces.

Fine production values, including Robert W. Zentis’ glossy setting and Garrick Lavon’s musical trio accompaniment, can’t mask the fact that Shaffer’s targets are bad stereotypes, his delivery colorless, and his writing less than inventive. Renee Taylor’s direction hasn’t given him much help. The biggest laughs were from a pre-pubescent boy, and the audience got smaller as the show went on.

* “White Trash,” Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays, 8 p.m.; Fridays-Saturdays, 8 & 10 p.m.; Sundays, 3 & 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 28. $15; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.