Solid ‘Thousand Days’ Follows Convention

CBS Studio Center has hosted a couple of truly inventive stage productions in recent years, and at first the Theatre Tribe’s “Anne of the Thousand Days” looks as if it might be yet another. It’s a promise that isn’t fulfilled.

A small band of English soldiers, accompanied by a hapless prisoner and a martial drumbeat, meets the audience in the parking lot and escorts us up a small hill to the “Tower of London”--actually a sound stage. We enter the tower through a dark passageway where, off to the side, the prisoner is being tortured.

After we emerge into the cavernous sound stage itself, however, the inventiveness stops. Most of the production is a fairly conventional rendition of Maxwell Anderson’s 1948 drama about King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

Except for the opening gambit, the most unusual aspect of Stuart Rogers’ staging is the use of a revolving turntable to assist scene changes, a technique not often seen in sub-100-seat productions.

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Yet the set pieces themselves are fairly simple, so it’s not clear why the producers went to so much trouble. And the device is somewhat distracting--as it moves, it often hums and creaks.

Parts of the play creak too, most notably monologues for both Henry and Anne, staged off to the side. The most labored point of Anderson’s script is when Henry shakes a figurative finger at the audience, challenging us to examine our lives and see if we, too, might have beheaded a few wives recently: “Are you so much better--you out there in the future?” Fortunately, Rogers resists the temptation to make explicit references to contemporary crimes.

On the plus side, Elisa Beth Garver is an excellent Anne. She manages to make plausible Anne’s transition from a young maiden who resists Henry to a calculating queen who exploits him. Then, as the doomed prisoner, she makes palpable Anne’s inner trembling as well as her outer defiance.

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As Henry, Leonardo Donato has the vitality of a gregarious man who genuinely enjoys toying with women’s lives but doesn’t particularly relish killing them. However, when Anne can’t accommodate his wandering eye, he has little patience for accommodating her--or for anything that requires an extended investment of time. At times, Donato’s line readings sound a bit too casual, as if he hasn’t really thought about the meaning, but then this Henry is a casual kind of guy who feels he shouldn’t have to worry about any heedless remarks he may make.

The supporting cast was generally strong at the reviewed performance, although five of the roles are double cast. Among those that aren’t double cast, Peter Henry Schroeder’s slimy Wolsey and Barry Cutler and Wendy Robie as Anne’s ineffectual parents are first-rate. Neal San Teguns’ period costumes look more sumptuous than Jason Cooper’s set.

* “Anne of the Thousand Days,” CBS Studio Center, 4024 Radford Ave., Studio City. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends June 30. $25. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.