Noise Within Meets ‘All’s Well’ Challenge

“All’s Well That Ends Well” sounds like a sunny proverb promising light comedy, but Shakespeare’s most optimistic title belongs to one of his most pessimistic plays. It is also among the Bard’s most difficult and least popular works, exiled alongside the other dreaded “problem plays.” Fearful of alienating audiences, theaters generally focus on the love-conquers-all fairy tale surface of “All’s Well.”

Fortunately, A Noise Within goes where other theaters fear to tread. Glendale’s gifted classical repertory company boldly embraces Shakespeare’s ironic ambiguities and dark cynicism, steeping Shakespeare’s themes in Victorian sexual repression. It’s an “All’s Well” that plays well and ends with a modern portrait of a marriage made in hell.

Director Michael Winters offers provocative interpretations of the furtive flight from love by anti-hero Bertram (a splendidly subtle Steven Flynn) and the amorous pursuit by Helena (a radiant Ann Marie Lee). Bertram’s confession that “I cannot love her” grows more sinister than an aristocrat’s mere rejection of a commoner--here it’s homosexual panic. His cruel rejection of devoted Helena, coupled with his preference for army buddies, makes Bertram’s motivations suspect. Then his devious seduction of a widow’s daughter (an impressive Ann Marie Lee) is accompanied by a sadistic command: “ . . . give thyself unto my sick desires.”

Not least among the many motivational problems inherent within “All’s Well” is Helena’s obsession for such a liar. “Lust doth play with what it loathes,” Helena shudders, yet is desperate to sacrifice herself to such loathing. Feminist scholars have made much of her character’s masculine qualities and wiles, necessary to a woman’s rise in a sexist society. Despite Helena’s angelic pose, she must resort to aggressive, unorthodox deceptions to achieve her questionable victory. By the “happy-ever-after” ending, she’s “become” royalty; but her prince resembles the “master-mistress” of the sonnets “who, moving others, is himself as stone.”

Except for a protracted farcical sequence when Bertram’s constant companion Parolles (an appropriately over-the-top Robert Pescovitz) is “unmasked,” director Winters and company maintain a beautifully somber tone. Fallen leaves litter the stage, symbolic of the Victorian morality denying erotic freedoms. Rand Ryan’s lucid lighting and Norman Mamey’s elegiac score provide haunting counterpoint to the melancholy struggles. The notorious bed-trick scene, discreetly off-stage in Shakespeare’s text, gets choreographed as a mute dance of the sexes, a menage-a-trois aching with sorrow and compassion.

* “All’s Well That Ends Well,” A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale. In repertory; call (818) 546-1924 for schedule. Ends May 15. $15. Running time: 3 hours, 15 minutes.

Delivering the ‘Canned Goods’

*

Is there a chance that Los Angeles Theatre Center’s founding company did not go bankrupt and vacate the Spring Street arts complex in 1991? Eerie deja vu permeates “Canned Goods,” a project of the Performing Arts Division of the Cultural Affairs Department, now at LATC’s small Theatre 4.

Silas Jones’ ambitious, impressive, heartfelt report from the battlefields of South-Central resembles a predictable after-school special--at first. Midway through the docudrama about an Asian American grocer’s retirement, theatrical ghosts begin populating the LATC stage. Such ghosts previously inhabited post-modernist plays that once dominated the former tenant’s stages.

Suddenly, an African American cowboy (portrayed with convincing heroism by Troy Anthony Cephers) in pristine white Western gear is speaking in a John Wayne twang while drawing his six-gun, reminding us of LATC’s 1985 opening production, an all-black version of Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love.” An ancestral ghost prowls the grocery, cursing the day she left Korea, reminiscent of David Henry Hwang’s one-acts. A prostitute named Buddha Baby (a harrowing Fran DeLeon) is seen ritually casting spells, much the way heroines behaved in LATC-prodigy Reza Abdoh’s epics.

Obviously, “Canned Goods” is no polite nod to multiculturalism. Jones, director Darryl Hill and company have embarked on a challenging presentation that refuses to reduce our city’s complex crises into a simple formula. They defiantly reject politically correct liberalism and pious generalities, instead forcing us to examine the urban subtext.

If a grocer shoots a customer, or a customer kills a clerk, can it all be reduced to a police report? Only in tabloid journalism and the nightly news. And so effects are employed from cutting-edge American dramatists--Suzan-Lori Parks, Abdoh, Jose Rivera, Regina Taylor. And so we experience a shock of recognition.

What makes “Canned Goods” work so well is that such hallucinatory visions are dramatically earned. It is grocer Angel King’s last day, but it is not a day for celebration. Consumed by regret, King suffers a psychotic breakdown.

Soon-Teck Oh’s tragic performance as the schizophrenic grocer is a colossal achievement. His lyrical speeches accompany emotional roller-coaster extremes that require consummate discipline. Oh meets every challenge, becoming a poignant, unforgettable figure of forgiveness.

“Canned Goods” delivers the goods.

* “Canned Goods,” Los Angeles Theatre Center Theatre 4, 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles. Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends April 24. $5. (213) 485-2437. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

‘His Wife’: Cute, Coy and Too Long

*

“His Wife” at Deaf West Theatre Company is an after-school special in search of a network sponsor. An earnest, relentlessly upbeat American Sign Language adaptation by Beverly Nero of her musical “The Bimbetto Libretto,” this ambitious staging never meets the challenge of its material. Any resemblance to actual divorce is purely coincidental while a coy, cute and sentimental tale of reconciliation unfolds.

Despite an impressively inventive set design by Jim Barbaley, “His Wife” remains tethered to the musical comedy genre. Ed Waterstreet’s direction is lucid and his actors obviously committed to the material, but it’s not enough to overcome an indulgent, overlong script. Scenes cry out for musical resolution--or for abrupt blackouts.

* “His Wife,” Deaf West Theatre, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends May 1. $15. (213) 660-4673 (voice); (213) 660-8826 (TTY). Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

‘Bright Room’: Sometimes Brilliant

*

Tony Kushner’s first professional play, “A Bright Room Called Day,” is belatedly receiving its Los Angeles premiere at the Odyssey in an appropriately academic context. In obtuse, self-conscious scenes about Nazism’s rise in 1930s Germany, foreshadows abound of Kushner’s “Angels in America.”

Under professor Lew Palter’s direction, the CalArts School of Theatre students adequately serve a sometimes brilliant, sometimes pretentious script by an obviously gifted beginner. Since admission is free, I recommend the experience to anyone interested in the development of one of America’s most significant playwrights. “A Bright Room Called Day” teaches by example.

* “A Bright Room Called Day,” Odyssey Theater, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m. Ends Saturday. Free. (805) 288-2132. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Tunes Don’t Work in ‘Generation Why’

*

Sarah Stanley should forget fantasies of a singing career and focus on writing and acting. While Stanley performs a variety of characters in her imaginative “Generation Why” at Tamarind Theatre, hilarious insights about the so-called baby buster generation are abundant and dramatic. But when she breaks out into original songs, her solo show dissolves into embarrassing commercial breaks.

Otherwise, Stanley’s talent is considerable. Her use of video is intrinsic to her portrait of a young advertising executive struggling to conceive automobile commercials appealing to her peers. Her Brechtian asides may provide possible insights into the suicide of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. “Generation Why” smells like teen spirit but never sounds like it but . . . Oh well, whatever, never mind.

* “Generation Why,” Tamarind Theatre, 5919 Franklin Ave., Hollywood. Mondays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends April 27. $10. (213) 883-1610. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.