THEATER BEAT : ‘Godex’ Reworks ‘Godot’

An all-points bulletin for Samuel Beckett purists: Romanian exile playwright Corneliu Mitrache has decided that Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” was all well and good, but maybe needed a sequel. He calls it “Godex Has Come,” and, at the Attic Theatre, it marks what might become a healthy wave of Beckettian revisionism now that the old man is dead and can’t make his famous demands for adherence to the original text.

For those of us who have “Godot” in our bloodstream, it’s hard to imagine if Mitrache’s joke really gets across to people who don’t know “Godot” from God. Alas, that is all this play really amounts to--a joke--with the punch line coming in Act I, thus rendering Act II pointless.

After Godex (a weak, uncommanding Beverly Sand) does arrive, the two fellows--archly renamed Klapp (George Sheldon) and Krapp (Mark Forrest)--have no reason to wait anymore. But they do anyway, so the later appearance of the original play’s master-slave pair (Hud Floyd’s funny Smiley and Mark Swinton’s drag queen Poponet) comes off as Mitrache slavishly following the tracks of “Godot,” rather than inventing an original response to it.

Sadly, “Godex” could have been original, and though Sheldon and Forrest, under Will Aaron’s direction, maintain a dry, absurdist air and timing, they don’t yet have the comic chops to get through Mitrache’s deadwood.

* “Godex Has Come,” Attic Theatre, 6562 1/2 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends March 20. $15; (213) 462-9720. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

Bad Deeds Abound in ‘Manhattan’

During a quiet moment in Glen Merzer’s “Manhattan Hurts,” at the Hudson Backstage Theatre, Kimiko Cazanov’s Angela tells Brian Mulholland’s Gene that while she’s amazed that he tried to pursue acting for 15 years, she really admires him for giving it up. It’s a smart-alecky line in a play stuffed with them, and the actors in the audience get a kick out of it. But Merzer’s play seems to posit nothing more than the notion that in the land of jerks, the partial jerk--in this case, Gene--is king.

This is close to Wallace Shawn territory (especially “Marie and Bruce”) but it’s too full of the glib chat of TV sitcoms and without Shawn’s pinpoint darkness. In Merzer’s world of New York publishing and casual dating, everyone eventually betrays everyone else, and director Gwenn Victor’s confident staging adds to the aura of the subject’s systemic nastiness.

Finally, though, the play itself gets sucked into the nastiness, with everyone--excluding a Harold Brodkey-like novelist character (a nicely smarmy Ed Evanko)--never having to pay for their bad deeds. That is often how it is in life, but here, the results feel like an empty one-liner. The real feeling comes from Mulholland, Cazanov and Erich Anderson, as a guy convinced there are no good women left in America.

* “Manhattan Hurts,” Hudson Backstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Mondays-Tuesdays, 8 p.m. Ends March 23. $12; (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

‘Stuff and Nonsense’ Needs Funnier Stuff

Patching together original and past blackout sketches, director John Potter is trying to bring the “Laugh-In” style of comedy back with “Stuff and Nonsense” at the Melrose Theatre.

As with “Laugh-In,” the comics are often much funnier than the sketches, and you can only guess how funny an evening this would be if Potter’s ensemble had a consistent supply of material to choose from.

Like a fireworks display with a couple of whoppers, only a handful of the 36 bits make an imprint.

That’s often due to what the actors bring to the game, as when Nancy Gulla uses some nifty improv to punch up a long routine about an absent wife making excuses to her husband--or when Wayne Yorke, as an old coot, waits for his son to return from the Civil War. Katie Jensen, who at times recalls the Goldie Hawn of “Laugh-In,” milks for every drop a running skit about a woman and a randy captain on a ship.

Nathan Holland and Lynn Potter regularly add acerbic touches, and Peter Szeliga relishes a scene as a TV critic enjoying a show too much. Like so much else here, though, he can’t do anything to save the scene’s predictability.

* “Stuff and Nonsense,” Melrose Theatre, 733 N. Seward Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Indefinitely. $15-$17; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Ringbarkus Spirit Gone From ‘Planet’

The team of Los Trios Ringbarkus--not a trio at all, but the duo of Stephen Kearney and Neill Gladwin--worked because of the combustible, unpredictable dynamic generated between the pair. When Ringbarkus cooked, and they cooked most of the time, it was because of a pure chemistry between Kearney and Gladwin.

With Gladwin reportedly back in his native Australia and Kearney on his own in his solo show, “Planet Kearney,” at Theatre/Theater, the Ringbarkus spirit just can’t be revived.

Watching this show is like seeing Laurel without Hardy: Kearney has yet to find a thematic comic base to stand on as a soloist, so his act, co-written and directed by Kaarin Fairfax, flails about with trite commentaries on busted relationships, or with paltry revivals of such old Ringbarkus bits as stuffing the mouth with crackers and singing. Kearney is going for a manic look at loneliness in the big city, but right now, he just looks lonely up there.

* “Planet Kearney,” Theatre/Theater, 1713 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Sundays, 5 and 7 p.m. Ends March 21. $12; (213) 469-9689. Running time: 1 hour.

Giron’s ‘Edith Stein’ Strains Credibility

Beware of the incredible real-life story as a basis for a play. It may be so incredible that it becomes hard to believe the play.

That is the central problem with Arthur Giron’s “Edith Stein,” despite the respectful reading it’s being given at the Crossley Theatre under Robin Strand’s direction. Giron begins with a long series of expositional scenes in many locations, tracking Edith Stein’s conversion from Judaism to Catholicism--and not just any Catholicism, but the kind extolled by the Carmelite nuns whom Stein joins in their austere convent as the Nazis rise to power in the 1930s.

Stein’s conversion remains a mystery, but a merely puzzling one, not the kind with the resonance Giron intends. This puzzle, though, is nothing compared to the inexplicable attraction Stein the nun has for Mark Henderson’s SS officer, whose Act II convent dialogues with her turn “Edith Stein” into a sometimes unintentionally comic chamber play. He views her as a pure vessel for the future white race, but it remains a strained motive, not helped by Henderson’s B-movie Nazi dialect.

Even more critically, Kristina Lankford’s Stein doesn’t let us share in the terrible pressure that must be building up in her to reveal her Jewish identity. She does let us feel the strain with her mother (a galvanic Vera Lockwood), but the ultimate opacity of Stein is as murky, though not as effective, as Henderson’s medieval-style set and Alan Falkner’s portentous lights.

* “Edith Stein,” Crossley Theatre, 1760 N. Gower Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends March 21. $12; (213) 964-3586. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.