THEATER REVIEW : Naked Angels Ascend to New Heights

Los Angeles is teeming with one-act festivals. The New York-based Naked Angels have joined the trend with “More Naked at the Coast,” eight one-acts at the Coast Playhouse. It’s a rip-roaringly entertaining follow-up to last year’s “Naked at the Coast,” which featured 11 short works by the company.

The evening’s opener, Jon Robin Baitz’s “It Changes Every Year,” directed by Darrell Larson, gingerly explores the emotional minefield of the mother-son relationship. Lorinne Dills Vozoff and Bibi Besch play two moms who are being taken out to a Mother’s Day lunch--by their sons’ gay lovers. Kurt Deutsch and Timothy Britten Parker play the lovers, who have decided to swap moms this year and avoid the annual rehashing of ancient family dramas. Baitz wisely leaves much unsaid in his touching drama, and Larson’s direction is similarly restrained.

Frank Pugliese’s “Snuff,” directed by Geoffrey Nauffts, is a chilling morality tale about the roles rationalization and compromise play in the process of corruption. Nauffts (filling in for an ailing Joshua Malina) plays an idealistic young film editor being led on the road to perdition by his colleague Al (Xander Berkeley), a human sewer in gold chains with a diabolic investment scheme.

In “A Hudson Moon,” directed by F. Emeryl, a man and a woman give radically conflicting versions of their first date. Timothy Britten Parker’s play, which features Gina Gershon and Billy Strong, is a Nichols and May routine that turns unexpectedly serious.

The evening’s funniest offering is Ned Eisenberg’s “Fruits and Nuts.” Picture “No Exit” with belly laughs. Eisenberg and Laura Jane Salvato play a hilariously enraged couple trapped in an existential nightmare of a relationship. Director Joumana Rizk officiates over the comic mayhem.

“Pay-Per-Kill,” Warren Leight’s polemic against capital punishment, directed by Jace Alexander, is a blunt-instrument satire. Although intended as farce, Leight’s concept of pay-per-view executions doesn’t strike one as so far-fetched after all, in light of recent media excesses.

Kenneth Lonergan’s “Heartsick Pioneer,” directed by Bruno Kirby, is a wistful boy-meets-girl valentine in which a heartsore female cop (Catherine Lloyd Burns) is haltingly wooed by a lonely security guard (Parker).

In the political drama “Limbo,” directed by Kate Baggot, playwright Pippin Parker paints a savage portrait of the United States as the 800-pound gorilla of world affairs.

Patrick Breen’s testosterone-packed “Midnight and Morning Rain,” directed by Alexander, could be subtitled “Men Who Bond Too Much.” Four guys, friends since childhood, gather to watch baseball, drink beer and shoot the breeze. Their comfortable rapport is shattered when the taboo subject of their boyhood homosexual experimentation is broached.

The precision-perfect performance art/dance troupe Instant Girl does show-stopping turns in both acts.

The acting throughout the evening is exceptional, the directing accomplished, the material insightful. A heavenly company, Naked Angels is warmly welcome in the City of Angels.

* “More Naked at the Coast,” Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Wednesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 7 and 10 p.m.; Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends July 10. $15-$17.50. (Tonight’s 6:30 p.m. performance is a benefit for the company; tickets cost $100.) (213) 650-8508. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.