Tricky Experiment Works for ‘Dream’

In most productions of Shakespeare, one role per actor is plenty. So you can’t help admiring the unstinting ambition of the “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills, where each of the five cast members plays no fewer than four parts.

It’s a tricky experiment, but director Flora Plumb pulls it off with aplomb, recycling her resourceful actors as a kind of wry counterpoint to the text’s look at identity and the nature of love.

More so than most, this production is deeply rooted in the imagination, both ours and the performers’. The stage is virtually empty, save for a few chairs and an upstage synthesizer for music and sound effects. The actors, meanwhile, leap in and out of their many roles with pluck.

In perhaps the bravest example, William Frankfather plays Demetrius, Hermia’s would-be lover, at the same time he plays Egeus, Hermia’s imperious father. This means that in certain scenes Frankfather is literally talking to himself--a stunt that the actors accomplish through mime and movement, not to mention some well-earned good will from the audience.

Rounding out the fine ensemble are Michael Gough (Puck and Theseus), Michelle Manning (Hippolyta and Helena), Jennifer Parsons (Hermia and Titania) and Paul Mercier (Lysander and Oberon).

Inevitably, the staging at times feels a little static and, well, underpopulated. But for the most part, this “Dream” is splendid make-believe, the purest expression of theater.

* “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Theatre 40, Beverly Hills High School campus, 241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Oct. 2. $14-$17. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours , 20 minutes.

‘Little Mikey’: An Activist Grows Up

Any musical that features a show-stopping production number set in a men’s room can’t be all bad.

“The Ballad of Little Mikey,” composer-librettist Mark Savage’s long-running look at a gay activist’s coming of age, is now at the St. Genesius Theatre in West Hollywood with a revised book and a new director, Mark Bringelson.

Like its title character (Mark Smith), the show has a little trouble finding itself. The early musical numbers depicting Mikey’s halting entry into gay life at UCLA during the late ‘70s are a lot of fun, albeit probably too naughty for some, with one song devoted to the joys of anonymous sex in public restrooms.

But the charm fades as Mikey and friends mobilize for a protest against homosexual stereotypes in the 1980 film “Cruising.” Savage treats this episode as the high-water mark in the struggle for gay rights, although AIDS activists and many others would likely disagree. The trouble with “Mikey” is that its slap-happy farce is undercut by tired agitprop.

The eight cast members act and sing their hearts out, though, with wisecracking John Price breathing welcome cynicism into the proceedings. And Smith is a divine gift to the musical theater, graced with a commanding singing voice and a boyish innocence quite in keeping with the show’s theme. He is one of the few actors who could get away with Savage’s fortuitous rhymes of, say, “mud” and “stud.”

* “The Ballad of Little Mikey,” St. Genesius Theatre, 1047 N. Havenhurst, West Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Indefinitely. $20. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour , 50 minutes.