THEATER REVIEW : Poverty Dept.’s Latest Is Needy

The Los Angeles Poverty Department, a.k.a. LAPD, has been widely hailed and hurrahed for the innovative experiment that it is, mixing homeless and ex-homeless people with artists to make performance works. But, according to its press materials, its “mission is to merge community effort with high-quality performance work.” And, while it may be filling the bill on the former, it’s failing at the latter.

Its latest effort, “Give Up All Your Possessions and Follow Me,” which played at La Boca Performance Space over the weekend, is the most wretched stage work in recent memory.

Admittedly, this frequently overrated group has done much better work. The continually changing roster of performers, founded in 1985 on downtown L.A.’s Skid Row under direction of John Malpede, gained a national reputation for its community residencies. And when it has taken on issues directly related to homelessness and other urban ills--such as in its best-known “Jupiter 35,” which chronicled a group member’s fall from a Skid Row window and his convalescence in L.A. County General Hospital--it has indeed had its moments.

Its current venture, however, has none of that cinema verite power. In characteristic LAPD style, the heavily improvised performance is based around a set scenario. This particular piece finds a fictional Jay Leno making a movie about his boyhood. He is often interrupted by a semi-crazed stunt double, but more often the breaks in the action consist primarily of a roving band of catatonic performers who either pile on the main guys, sleepwalk about the stage, house and audience areas or contribute extraneous background noises.

If the trick here is to teach homeless people and others to mumble and rant unintelligibly for no apparent dramatic reason, then LAPD is doing a bang-up job. Otherwise, the dream material from which this scenario was reportedly derived has not been sufficiently shaped to form the framework of a presentable work.

This kind of public presentation may help some of the participants exorcise personal demons. But it accomplishes nothing whatsoever to subject an audience to so much self-indulgent and artless blithering.