Theater Review : ‘Act One’ May be Ready for Prime Time

How serious is cable TV about finding new programming for the much-vaunted 500-channel future? Serious enough that the industry is planting theater seedlings that some day might grow into prime-time oaks.

Showtime Networks is co-producing “Act One: A Festival of Fifteen New One-Act Plays” at the Met Theatre in Hollywood. The final installment, a slightly overlong bill of five playlets dubbed “Evening C,” runs through July 10.

How well these staged pilots will translate to the small screen is anyone’s guess. Yet as theatrical chamber pieces, most of them come as a very pleasant surprise, sharply written and engagingly acted by some relatively big-name writers and players.

The best is “Rosemary with Ginger,” Edward Allan Baker’s spicy domestic blood bath that plays like a gender-reversed retread of Sam Shepard’s “True West.” Briefly reunited in a shuttered diner, working-class sisters Ginger (Lucinda Jenney) and Rosemary (Susan Barnes) circle like dueling bobcats as they relive their hellish childhood and agonizing marriages.

While the material itself is depressing, director Paul McCrane has managed to mine earthy humor amid the tragedy.

Almost as effective is Craig Lucas’ “The Dying Gaul,” which adds a gay-themed twist to the old story about the naive screenwriter in Hollywood. This time around, young scribe Robert (Steven Antin) is offered a Faustian bargain by an unctuous Disney executive named Roger (Jerry Levine).

Lucas treads no new ground here, but the play nevertheless feels fresh and funny, largely because of Antin’s wide-eyed innocence and Levine’s hilariously smarmy insincerity. Harris Yulin directed.

Lynn Martin’s “Waltzing De Niro” and Bryan Goluboff’s “The Other Five Percent” are more sporadically entertaining three-character works, though each is blessed with a high-spirited lead performance.

In the intriguing fantasy “De Niro,” a young woman falls in love with a next-door neighbor who may or may not be Robert De Niro. Director Stephanie Shroyer allows the pacing to slacken at times, though Scott Alan Campbell’s mugging impersonation of the “GoodFellas” star is a real hoot.

Elias Koteas likewise turns in a forceful, memorable performance as a onetime high school jock whose life has hit the skids in the somewhat sinister “Five Percent,” with direction from Arliss Howard.

The evening’s big disappointment--considering the acting talent involved--is “Tinkle Time,” Dana Coen’s lifeless and unfunny skit about a U.S. president (Howard Hesseman, of TV sitcom fame) and his top adviser (Harry Shearer) forced to visit a run-down public toilet during a campaign whistle-stop. Unfortunately, the premise just devolves into platitudes about arrogant public figures deaf to the needs and opinions of their constituents.

It’s the kind of approach you see all the time on--dare we say it?--TV sitcoms.

* “Act One: Evening C,” The Met Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hollywood . Wednesdays-Fridays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; July 10, 3 p.m. $17. (213) 957-1152. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.