Listening to Woes in ‘Chick on the Field’

“There’s a Chick on the Field,” Bernadette Sabath’s one-woman show at the Court, directed by Joe Cacaci, poses a troubling question that often crops up in autobiographical solo shows: How distinct should a piece of theater be from psychological self-analysis?

Some would argue that no distinction should be made at all, but Sabath herself raises the issue when she quips that, although her show may sound a lot like therapy, it’s different: In this case, she’s charging others to listen to her talk about her feelings.

Now, that’s funny stuff, but it’s a point well taken. In spite of some inspired slapstick and a heartfelt tribute to the healing powers of baseball, the show is essentially a painful personal exorcism in which Sabath struggles to come to peace with her memories of her disabled brother Jimmy who died in childhood.

When Sabath holds up Jimmy’s picture at the end of the play, we are moved, but on reflection, the material’s intensely personal nature seems more psychoanalytically purgative than dramatically cathartic. Although she possesses the formidable agility of a great clown, Sabath never makes that death-defying leap from the specific to the universal.

* “There’s a Chick on the Field,” Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles. Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends June 28. $15. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour.