‘The Boiler Room’ Offers Hypnotic Character Study

Cold? Call Olga. She’s responsible for shoveling coal into the building’s boiler. Or at least her husband, the super, is supposed to keep its rusting pipes heated. But when you call down to the basement apartment, Olga answers. Ask the middle-aged Puerto Rican immigrant to send her husband up to repair a leak, and Olga invariably replies: “No, Miguel is not here. He went to the store downtown. He has to take two trains, a bus and a ferry . . . “

But there’s more than enough passion in Ivonne Coll’s performance to keep the Cast-at-the-Circle Theatre heated until spring. Coll’s tempestuous, seething, complex mood swings make “The Boiler Room” a hypnotic character study. We never know what this desperate Puerto Rican immigrant will say or do next.

Of course, that’s by playwright Reuben Gonzalez’s design. Olga is the Mother Courage of Spanish Harlem--a boiling soup composed of vulgar opportunism, self-deprecating humor, spite, dignity, rage, generosity, crude manipulation, faith, paganism, fear and love. She’ll lie to her son Anthony (Steven Cisneros), a thieving streetwise adolescent too savvy to fall for her tricks. Yet Olga will also clutch him to her bosom, desperately afraid that she’ll lose her boy during a purse-snatching.

This immigrant also holds tight to the American Dream. In this case, it’s moving up to 4E. A murder left the apartment vacant, and the building’s going condo. That’s why she’s eager to impress her daughter Olivia (Maritza T. Rivera) and lawyer son-in-law (Stephen Held). If they take over the two-bedroom apartment, maybe Olga can finally move out of a basement for the first time in America.

“I followed that man from basement to basement,” she says of her absent husband’s live-in janitor jobs. But when he stopped drinking after 25 years of marriage, he abandoned her. Does she writhe in self-pity? Olga merely observes that, “I am not a loser. . . . I never had anything to lose.”

Coll seizes this role with exhilarating confidence. Her acting credits in the program state, “She has trained with Lee Strasberg and Lucille Ball.” That’s the perfect description of her work in “The Boiler Room”--part Actors Studio method, part “I Love Lucy” screwball comedy.

Her work is beautifully counter-pointed by the gifted Cisneros as her precocious wild child. Cisneros is never coy or cute. He plays the street tough with shrewd understatement, as if calmly accepting inevitable doom. But underneath the philosophical acceptance simmers a rage similar to Olga’s. He is every inch his mother’s son.

Rivera’s more difficult task is to portray the estranged daughter as an outsider hoping to come in from the cold, despite her seeming good fortune. Her contradictory maneuvers are neatly supported by Held as the long-suffering spouse.

Director Alex Colon balances the emotional extremes with an orchestra conductor’s sense of timing, only faltering in the final scene when Gonzalez’s text stumbles briefly into sentimentality.

Designer Andy Daley’s massive boiler dominates the basement apartment like a brooding Mayan altar. No wonder Olga lights votive candles and prays to the furnace: It’s her only source of comfort, heat and hope.

* “The Boiler Room,” Cast-at-the-Circle Theatre, 802 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Dark tonight-Jan. 1; resumes Jan. 2. Ends Jan. 30. $15. (213) 462-0265. Running time: 2 hours.

‘Drivin’ Around’: An Actor’s Tour de Force

There is a single compelling reason to see “Drivin’ Around With Joe” at the Burbage Theatre: Kenneth Tigar. His tour de force performance is a blow-out.

Until Tigar enters the seedy Los Angeles apartment, Mitch Giannunzio’s black comedy about industry performers dealing cocaine while waiting for their next acting gig is offbeat and modestly amusing. Neither as inventive verbally as David Rabe’s “Hurlyburly,” nor as plot-savvy as Robert Altman’s “The Player,” the world premiere strains to keep us interested in an erratic lineup of Hollywood hopefuls.

Toni Hudson’s bit-actress Angel is an abused mother who spoon-feeds her baby liquor between phone calls from her agent. Hudson’s work is persuasive, and her compelling silences alert us to a history of abuse, but her work remains incongruous beside her friend Kimmy, portrayed by Liann Pattison as an over-the-top coke-head ditz who can’t shut up.

Angel’s husband, Jimmy, is losing his cool while waiting for the big score; Tom Fervoy interprets this loser as a petulant, selfish child. Donald Agnelli is the self-indulgent star of a sitcom, but he’s rarely convincing.

When a crazed drug addict crashes the apartment, “Drivin’ Around With Joe” resembles a series of outtakes from a variety of B-movies. Richard Hicks assumes acting risks galore while waving a gun, making jokes, breaking down, giggling, cursing and screaming. The problem with the sequence emerges from director Scott Segall’s inability to evoke danger. This guy’s a joke, and those who take him seriously lose all credibility.

Reality is abruptly restored with Tigar’s entrance as the mysterious Joe, a sinister king of Hollywood-Babylon. Tigar’s performance is a homage to evil. He’s a human cobra let loose in a room, able to size up people in a chilling glance, dealing out irresistible offers of ultimate sensual gratification. Tigar’s genius is to make Joe somehow avuncular, a father figure who abducts young boys, but only as a Peter Pan might. Joe has a weakness for celebrities, yes, but don’t we all?

* “Drivin’ Around With Joe,” the Burbage Theatre, 2330 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles. Fridays-Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Dark tonight-Sunday, Jan. 1. Plays Dec. 31 and Jan. 2. Ends Jan. 23. $12-$15. (310) 478-0897. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

A Moving Lesson in Racial History

How would the history of African Americans be changed if Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X secretly met in a Harlem apartment at the height of the 1960’s civil rights movement? Probably not at all, which is what makes Jeff Stetson’s deceivingly simple one-act “The Meeting” so poignant and so believable. We accept the fact that these two powerful leaders can’t overcome society’s racism but can overcome political differences to gain mutual respect--as men .

At the Stage of Grace, director Randy Dare repeatedly reminds us that both are fated for martyrdom. At one point, they stand on the narrow balcony to look out over the city, and it’s staged as a chilling duplicate of the moment just before King’s assassination in Memphis.

Anthony Griffith inhabits Malcolm X with riveting ferocity. Tall, possessed with political conviction that makes his rhetoric tremble like a force of nature, his Malcolm is everything Spike Lee’s never became. Alvin Walker portrays Martin as a leader who is beginning to lose his confidence. Tolerant, patient, compassionate, Martin’s self-doubts get provoked by Malcolm’s determined debate. He is a troubled leader who nevertheless has a few lessons to offer the militant Malcolm--such as forgiveness. Walker may not look like King, but he projects Martin’s essence beautifully.

Overseeing their debate is a security guard, acted with quiet inspiration by Markhum Stansbury Jr., who manages to convey a society of seething unrest with mere glances.

“The Meeting” is a moving, harrowing reminder of our country’s racial history. Unfortunately, it’s accompanied by “Zeke: A History of Blacks in the Movies,” a solo show by Darrow Igus that is self-indulgent, sentimental, and historically confused.

* “The Meeting” and “Zeke: A History of Blacks in the Movies,” Stage of Grace, 1611 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 3 & 7 p.m. Dark tonight-Jan. 1, resumes Jan. 2. Ends Jan. 30. $12-$15. (213) 660-TKTS. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.