‘Stories’ a Moving One-Woman Show

Writer-performer Jude Narita has a rare gift of understanding usually reserved for the best poets and novelists. By applying a seemingly boundless human sympathy, she slowly develops epiphanies that linger long after the final curtain.

Such moments are frequent in “Stories Waiting to Be Told: The Wilderness Within,” Narita’s moving one-woman show at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Ostensibly a gallery of portraits of Asian American women, this highly theatrical piece has a plain-spoken simplicity and emotional sophistication that will touch nearly everyone who encounters it.

Many of these brief monologues are bittersweet, with a faint but unmistakable sardonic edge. One character self-mockingly recounts her awakened lesbian desires on the hot summer day she visited a women’s music concert: “I saw my fear clearly, as if it were standing beside me,” she recalls. Another character describes in chillingly nonchalant fashion how she escaped parental pressures by abusing drugs.

Despite Charlie Stratton’s generally assured direction--and stunning chiaroscuro lighting by Joe Damiano--”Stories” is not seamless. Some of the monologues could use more development and technical and thematic linkage with the other bits. Yet even these quibbles pale as this thoroughly natural and unaffected performer plumbs the depths of her characters’ souls, as naturally and freely as if she were stepping into a familiar dress.

* “Stories Waiting to Be Told: The Wilderness Within,” Los Angeles Theatre Center Theater 3, 514 Spring St. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Saturday. $15. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

‘The Deal’ a Smart, Satisfying Outing

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Though not based on a true story--at least not explicitly--Matthew Witten’s “The Deal” at Two Roads Theatre successfully exploits the familiar form and themes of the docudrama genre. Smart and satisfying, if a little static, this meditation on graft and G-men seems all but tailor-made for the small screen.

The protagonist is Peter (the suitably intense Pat Tanzillo), an FBI agent with a conscience. Assigned to bug a hopelessly naive and possibly corrupt local pol (Michael Brooks), Peter complicates the sting operation by developing sympathy for the poor chump. With his boss (Michael Kelly, a Jeff Daniels look-alike) pressing for a conviction, the hero must choose between loyalty to his job and his own sense of justice.

The play rarely tests theatrical boundaries, but director Ted Schwartz deftly manages the one clever expository device: tape-recorded interviews re-enacted in flashback. The quartet of actors, meanwhile, is sly and uniformly well-cast. Brooks is frighteningly plausible as the perpetually clueless machine hack. And Mike Sabatino enjoys some subversively funny moments as a sleazy state senator who might be more at home in a Martin Scorsese movie.

* “The Deal,” Two Roads Theatre, 4348 Tujunga Ave., Studio City. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends April 30. $12. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

A ‘Road’ That’s Difficult to Take

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Jim Cartwright is one angry playwright.

In “Road,” now at Theatre of NOTE, Cartwright wallows in the miseries of a hellish Lancashire town, whose woeful inhabitants get drunk on cheap wine, have cheap sex in alleys and rail at the injustice of their cheapened lives. As one resident aptly observes: “This is where things slide to but don’t drop off.”

Cartwright introduces a total of 30 characters in a series of interrelated vignettes, with narration from a sinister gadabout named Scullery (Steve Morgan Haskell). Some scenes employ a kind of Orton-esque dark humor. We observe a coquettish woman so absorbed in seducing a male guest she scarcely notices he has vomited and passed out in an easy chair. The play’s ubiquitous domestic squabbles, meanwhile, try to tap into the raw working-class fury of John Osborne, the British theater’s original “angry young man” of 35 years ago.

Unfortunately, Cartwright has little of Orton’s wit, and none of Osborne’s complexity. It’s nearly impossible to identify with these nasty characters, whose every monologue builds to a crescendo of earsplitting rage. The histrionic performances in director Peta Redenbach-Vila’s production hardly make the play any more bearable, either.

* “Road,” Theatre of NOTE, 1517 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends May 10. $10. (213) 856-8611. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.

Missing Inspiration Ties Up Tongues

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The best thing about the Flying Tongues is the name.

This Baltimore-based improvisation group recently landed at the Venue as part of a national tour. Their gently warped humor might win a few converts among recovering Monty Python addicts, but as on-the-spot comics, the Tongues sink like lead balloons. They are foiled by a downright eerie lack of inspiration and topicality.

Despite the “comedy/improv” self-descriptor, the troupe fares worst in bits relying on audience suggestion. A soap opera parody drags on interminably. Marginally better, but still too dated and obvious to be really funny, are takeoffs on “Jeopardy!” and “The Dating Game,” with viewers feeding contestants information.

The five-member ensemble--Joe Brady, Jimi Kinstle, Larry Malkus, Bruce Nelson and Melissa Sharlat--seems more at ease with scripted material. A telephone operators’ audition for a psychic hot line borrows a medley from “A Chorus Line”--an amusing conceit dampened, yet again, by a moldy punch line.

This troupe needs to find some fresher targets. Today’s headlines might be a good place to start.

* The Flying Tongues, the Venue, 600 Moulton Ave., Lincoln Heights. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends May 7. $17.50. (213) 221-5894. Running time: 2 hours.