‘Beside Myself ‘: Formulaic Look at One’s Identity

Amy Hill is such an utterly beguiling, candid and witty woman that she could probably perform the classifieds and knock your socks off. But her latest one-woman show--”Beside Myself” at East West Players--is her most formulaic yet. It hardly does her talents justice.

Anybody who’s seen an autobiographical solo in recent years knows the recipe. Part One: I Was a (Your Ethnicity Here) Child, Which Was Confusing. Part Two: I Suffered Because of Society’s Attitude Toward (Y.E.H.). Note: This section must have the protagonist suffer at the hands of nasty schoolkids. Part Three: I Am Forging Ahead, Despite Media Treatment of (Y.E.H.).

It’s not that Hill’s anecdotes about growing up Japanese-Finnish-American, nor her assessments of the slings and arrows that assail multiethnic people, aren’t compelling. But there are by now more provocative ways to approach the same material, or--perish the heretical thought!--other issues to talk about.

Hill, for instance, is particularly adept when she isn’t right “beside herself,” when she steps away from the first-person. When she portrays her Japanese mother, for instance, she’s brilliant and hilarious. But Amy as Amy actually reveals less about the cultural displacement that is Hill’s topic.

Anne Etue, who staged Hill’s previous solos, once again directs astutely. And Chris Tashima’s cartoony set strikes just the right note.

* “Beside Myself,” East West Players, 4424 Santa Monica Blvd., Silver Lake. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Aug. 15. $12-$15. (213) 660-0366. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

‘Couch’ Sags Into Bad Melodrama

Playwright Lynne Kaufman, whose “The Couch” is at the Fountain Theatre, likes to take redoubtable historical figures and reduce them to stick figures in pretentious, pseudo-intellectual melodramas.

Recently, her “Speaking in Tongues” at the Cast spun the tale of James and Nora Joyce, their daughter Lucia and Samuel Beckett. This time out, the victims are Sigmund Freud, Emma and Carl Jung, and Jung’s mistress, Toni Laufer. But you wouldn’t even recognize these folks as anyone in particular if it weren’t for a few snippets of Jungian and Freudian thought that are tacked onto their characters like window dressing in the second and third acts.

Mr. Mid-Life Crisis, a.k.a. Jung (a respectable Jack Shearer), is wrestling not only with an impending break with his mentor Freud (the too restrained Richard Voigts), but also with the latest of a string of concubines.

In one corner, you have Emma, the wife-as-doormat. In the other corner, you have the interloping bimbo, Toni. Both women live and breathe to wait on his Jungian highness, The Great Intellect. Essentially, it’s the same setup as in Henrik Ibsen’s “The Master Builder,” but without the poetry or higher planes of meaning of that famous symbolist work.

The play would like you to think it’s feminist, because Emma (sturdy Janni Brenn) and Toni (stiff Susan Rome, whose character work consists mostly of pushing her chest forward) cobble out a time-share agreement for the care, feeding and breeding of Herr Jung. But the setup is more male fantasy than liberation, and it never seriously tackles the underlying cultural premises that leave women thinking they have only such pathetic options.

* “The Couch,” Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 22. $15. (213) 663-1525. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

‘Uncle Balthazar’ Lost in Translation

“Uncle Balthazar,” currently in an amateurish Armenian Theatre Company staging at the Assistance League Playhouse, is billed as a staple of the Armenian theater repertoire, and its playwright Hagop Baronian as “the Armenian Moliere.” But either this 19th-Century bedroom farce lost a whole lot in the translation (by Paul Rapley and Aramazd Stepanian), or Moliere isn’t very well-regarded east of Europe.

Co-translator Stepanian also directs and plays the title role in this satire about a man who finds out his wife has a lover but is foiled in his attempts to divorce her. He’s a big, cuddly comic presence onstage, but the supporting cast is dreadfully uneven. Jeff Keel is magnetic as the lover Gibar, but Sigrid Adrienne as the wife does little beyond routine aristocratic harrumphing, and others such as Susan Najarian as the maid are hopelessly wooden. And despite some clever stage business, the pacing is mud-slow throughout.

Given that there aren’t many Armenian works produced in L.A., “Uncle Balthazar” has value to its targeted community and as a novel item. Don’t hold your breath on it inspiring any stampede of interest in Armenian dramatic literature, though. The company’s next outing--the Aug. 6 premiere of a 1981 play set in Soviet Armenia called “The Unfinished Monologue”--might be of more interest.

* “Uncle Balthazar,” Armenian Theatre Company at the Assistance League Playhouse, 1367 N. St. Andrews Place, Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays through Sept. 4 (in English), Sundays, Sept. 5 & 12 (in Armenian), 7:30 p.m. Ends Sept. 12. $12. (213) 466-1767 or (in Armenian) 957-9618. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

‘First Class’ Is Off by a Few Numbers

“First Class” at Nosotros is a third-class ditty about a couple of hapless homeless brothers who can’t get it together since Mommy the hooker pumped a slug into her noggin. Candido Tirado’s rambling melodrama is tedious, sentimental and unoriginal, but at least it’s got one halfway decent performance in it.

Jimmy Medina and Vince Lozano play Speedy and Apache, respectively. In Act I, Apache is down on his luck, and Speedy has landed a gig with a rich incestuous father-daughter couple who’re expecting a kid and need some schmo to pass off as the baby’s dad. In Act II, Speedy’s setup has soured, while Apache is getting his act together.

Medina plays smarmy Speedy with almost enough manic energy to make up for the script. Lozano, however, is semi-comatose throughout. Director Andy David-Kossin keeps the interplay between the two skittering about the stage, but doesn’t give the play an arc.

* “First Class,” Nosotros, 1314 N. Wilton Place, Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Aug. 15. $12. (213) 465-4167. Running time: 1 hour,55 minutes.

‘Apostrophe’ a Trip That Wilts on Road

Janet Lee Aspers has penned a sentimental journey back through one young woman’s 1960s odyssey. The Company of Angels production of “Apostrophe ‘68” is competent, but the play is just a by-the-numbers compendium of familiar flower child era scenes.

Basically a memory play, “Apostrophe ‘68” tracks naive Midwesterner Karen (the intense Chase Masterson) as she finds a beau, gets pregnant and heads off to live with the hippies in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. The gaggle of druggies and draft dodgers that dominate her brave new tie-dyed world are played well enough by the ensemble, but the play’s few poignant moments are outside this milieu.

Only when the action cuts to Karen’s brother Steve (Mark Burnham), writing letters home from Vietnam, does the material have gravity. But the home-front story needs to be pared down considerably, and the treacly moralizing near the end has got to go.

* “Apostrophe ‘68,” Company of Angels, 2106 Hyperion Ave., Silver Lake. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug . 19. $10. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.