Three ‘Little Plays’ Examine Alienation

The series of short plays “Little Plays . . . Big Playwrights” might also add this subtitle for its second set, “Evening B”: “ . . . Alienated Characters.”

The most interesting of these characters, now inhabiting the stage at the McCadden Theatre in Hollywood, are the ones in the evening’s first play: Howard Korder’s “Nobody” (1986). In a nicely understated tone, Korder explores the enigma of why a man falls prey to a group that loves guns, hates paying income tax and believes the world is controlled by an international Jewish banking conspiracy.

Joel Anderson is impressively blank and emotionally unreachable as Carl, a factory worker who loses his job and drifts further and further away from his family into alienation, alcohol and violence. His inarticulate attempts to understand the world make him prime fodder for a group that offers instant faux empowerment. Woody Drennan directs the evening’s most successful piece, and gets fine performances from Neil Zevnik as the enraged group leader, Glen Beaudin as Carl’s troubled son and from Jill Jaress as a neighbor who goes to bed with Carl, drawn to the danger she imagines in his blankness.

Caryl Churchill’s marital farce “Three More Sleepless Nights” (1980) is the most overtly comic play. Though her tone is droll, the playwright’s view is bleak. She paints three bedroom scenes--in the first a couple bickers incessantly; in the second a woman sits in a stupor while her partner excitedly recites the plot of “Alien.” In the third, the first woman and second man have left their respective spouses and gotten together.

As the third couple congratulate themselves for starting anew, Churchill makes it clear that their old patterns are already repeating. Joe Salazar directs an uneven cast; Frances Fisher and Faber Dewar are both vivid as the final, doomed couple who believe they’ve changed their lives.

“The Disposal” (1968) by William Inge is by far the most earnest piece; it makes a better exercise for actors than it does an experience for an audience (particularly at the end of a long evening). Three death row prisoners dwell side by side, not seeing one another but hearing everything that goes on in their adjacent cells. Jess (Salazar) is scheduled to die that evening for killing his pregnant wife, and he waits for his father to come to offer forgiveness.

This is an interminable wait, filled up with taunts and ghoulish confessions from Archie, a flamboyant homosexual who murdered his mother and grandmother (Terry Ray, who is both over the top and insufficient), and a sad, marital visit between the simple Luke (Greg Mullavey) and his wife (Jaress) who says she’s not ashamed of him but clearly is. Directed by Lawrin Goulston, the pace is plodding, and everything feels dragged out and overstated. Salazar brings an interesting, moon-faced, baby-lipped softness to the wife-killer Jess, but his hysterics as he approaches death seem pure acting class.

The evening is held together by the tension that occurs when eloquent writers capture the inadequacy of our attempts to state our deepest needs.

* “Little Plays . . . Big Playwrights, Evening B,” the McCadden Theatre, 1157 North McCadden Place, Hollywood, Saturday-Sunday, 7 p.m., starting July 11 Thursday-Friday 7 p.m. Ends July 28. $18. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 3 hours, 45 minutes.