THEATER REVIEW : ‘Wild Hearts’ Opens Venue at Brewery

The Venue is a new performance space in the Brewery, an artists’ colony that has taken over a sprawling former brewery just northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It’s an extremely urban-looking site. But the Venue is opening with a couple of productions about the Wild West.

The weekend show, “Wild Hearts,” is a quartet of mostly two-character scenes by Rita Sioux Lilly. Despite the writer’s name, they have nothing to do with Native Americans.

Only one of the vignettes begins to rise above the level of an acting exercise. It features Diana Bellamy as a pregnant woman traveling west. Through a series of monologues that precede or follow the other playlets on the bill, we gradually see the woman’s conditions going from bad to worse. Finally, her closing scene with a grave-digger (Daniel Riordan) serves as a fitting epitaph on the heroic struggles of the women who journeyed westward.

Bellamy’s performance matches the dimensions of the role. She also does a sly turn as Belle (the name is evidence of the danger for stereotype here), the feisty proprietor of a saloon in a deserted mining camp who encounters romance in the form of an itinerant trapper (Jerry Wayne Bernard). This scene is cute but predictable.

Paula Randol-Smith and Riordan share an even more predictable scene about an Irish washerwoman and the American soldier who done her wrong. But the worst scene comes earlier: a confrontation between an outlaw--who’s tiresome in her attempts to outrage--and an aging sheriff. This one is most notable for the haziness of its exposition, including its purposefully opaque ending.

Allison Liddi directed with too generous a hand. As women-in-the-West shows go, this one can’t keep up with the likes of “Going to See the Elephant” or “Abundance.” Another show, “Movin’ West,” plays on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

* “Wild Hearts,” The Venue, 600 Moulton Ave., Studio 103-B, Los Angeles. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends April 24. $15.50-$17.50. (213) 221-5894. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.