Theater Review : Padua Hills Annual Festival: The Thrill Is in the Discovery

Discovering a new play can be a thrill, even if the buzz wears off before intermission. The Padua Hills Playwrights’ Festival heightens that thrill by asking theatergoers to promenade from play to play, setting each work on a different, impromptu, unexpected, usually outdoor stage. You’ve heard of found art. This is found staging.

The festival itself is also itinerant, changing location each summer. It has just landed at the USC campus, where it offers six new plays in two evenings. Series A opened Friday night.

Discovering a new Ibsen play is the subject of “Summer in Gossensass,” the heftiest work in Series A (and the only play performed indoors). Two British actresses are desperate, in a refined, turn-of-the-century way, to get their hands on the new play by the gloomy genius of Norway. Playwight-director Maria Irene Fornes develops a wonderful premise, impeccably acted by Julie Osburn and Pamela Gien, that explicates the passion for art, the mystery and thrill of struggling to figure out what it means.

The women are so hungry to read Ibsen’s new play, “Hedda Gabler,” that Elizabeth (Osburn) tries to translate it, word by word, from a Danish version she’s managed to get her hands on. She doesn’t speak Danish.

When they learn the play is going to be produced in London, Marion (Gien) slips into the rehearsal room and steals some pages from the script. The two women, along with Elizabeth’s brother John (Robert Rigamonti), enact the pilfered scene, struggling valiantly to figure out who their characters are. Their urgency is funny and touching.

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The women rehearse their one scene repeatedly, trying different interpretations based on the little information they have. Are they projecting their own relationship, which Fornes never discloses, onto the characters? We never find out. As soon as John delivers the obscure object of desire--the full play in English--the characters have what they seek. Their talks begin to resemble a discussion group at a dramaturgical society, and are about as exciting to watch. The play is brightened somewhat by the presence of a third, weirdly intense woman (Pamela Gordon), but, essentially, Fornes forsakes some delightful, burgeoning characters to deliver a conventional appreciation of Ibsen.

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Kelly Stuart also supplies a great premise in her demented, funny play, “Demonology,” a kind of post-modern “Twilight Zone” episode. “Demonology” takes place in the office of a baby-formula-manufacturing company. The men who run the company love to discuss the physical attributes of their secretaries, but they never talk about the company’s dirty secret--a shipment of bad baby formula that killed hundreds of infants in some unspecified country.

Now, the company is experiencing random acts of sabotage. Simultaneously, the women are starting to rise up from their subservient positions in ominous ways. There could be a conspiracy afoot?--the men are too paralyzed to find out for sure. One source of their paralysis is the incredibly sexy Gina (Lola Glaudini), a new mother who expresses and stores her breast milk in the office, milk that DeMartini (Bob Gould) steals and drinks on the sly.

As a director, Stuart gets a funky, funny energy from her actors. Her play is strangely lovable, but she stretches the tension about just what is going on for too long without altering it, and the play loses its momentum.

Finally, the first play of the evening, “Entrevista 187” by Gil Kofman, never develops any momentum. A woman (Kadina Delejalde) tries to convince two men, mean immigration authorities (Frank Wood and Jeff Phillips), to let her see her brother, who may or may not be held in the facility they oversee, and who may or may not be her husband. An atmosphere of nasty innuendo and threat pervades the interview. But “Entrevista 187” remains as faceless as its title, a warm-up to a play and not the thing itself.

* “Padua Hills Playwrights’ Festival: Series A,” USC, Gate Five, Bing Auditorium, Jefferson Boulevard and McClintock Street, Thursday-Friday, 7:30 p.m. Ends Aug. 11. $20 ($35 for both series). (213) 466-1767. Running time for Series A: 3 hours, 45 minutes. Series A: “Entrevista 187,” written and directed by Gil Kofman. With Frank Wood, Kadina Delejalde and Jeff Phillips. “Demonology,” written and directed by Kelly Stuart. With Lola Glaudini, Bob Gould, Jan Johnson and Kathleen Glaudini. “Summer in Gossenssas,” written and directed by Maria Irene Fornes. With Pamela Gordon, Julie Osburn, Robert Rigamonti and Pamela Gien.