Cracking the Surface

As the title suggests, Yabo Yablonsky’s two-act play “Cracks in a Sidewalk,” at American Renegade Theatre, has no time for sentiment. For his autobiographical memoir of growing up tough in postwar Brooklyn streets, Yablonsky has shelved the rose-colored glasses for a playwright’s binoculars, focusing on the ‘hood’s colorful individuals--one at a time--and from a distance. It’s rarely pretty, usually ugly, sad and dirty, yet spirited and commanding. “Cracks” sounds and feels authentic.

This is the world depicted by author Hubert Selby Jr. in his “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” and influenced by the pulsating prose poetry of Henry Miller and his own New York memoir masterpiece, “Black Spring.” The early passages in “Cracks” are as Milleresque, in fact, as anything recently on stage, though Yablonsky could fill this gallery of characters with even more of his poetry. There’s no reason to spare the music when it sings like this.

Yablonsky has his alter-ego, Heshey (a solid Barry Thompson), guide us through his streets, and from person to person; there’s little in the way of conventional “scenes” in this work, but rather characters speaking to us in direct address, as if from the grave. (Alas, director T.J. Castronovo’s method of having characters mill about between scenes on the barely credible, uncredited street set is more plodding and repetitive than atmospheric.)

The direct-address mode does feel like an acting vehicle, but the hands behind the wheel are usually skilled. Some are fierce, like Alex Sol’s awesome Frankie Phantom, whose description of a street fight is a piece of verbal cinema worthy of Sam Peckinpah. Some of them are just as strong, but smart, like Kurt Sinclair’s fatherly Tiger, and Gary Lynn Collier’s Uncle Hank, whose recital of his Spanish Civil War experience is so vivid that you don’t mind that it’s a huge detour in the middle of the show.

The street animals produce their own animal cops, like Bill Dearth’s scary Det. O’Connell (“kids respect nothing but pain”) and girls with pretty advanced animal instincts, like Nickella Moschetti’s unforgettable Janette, who seems to like sex more than the guys. Moschetti is an ideal medium for Yablonsky’s tender-to-tough style, most strikingly in a scene where she slowly seduces Heshey.

Though Yablonsky’s writing almost never veers from an in-your-face naturalism, the actors sometimes soften the impact. Paul Marius’ Angel is a bit too sober for a junkie, while David A. Cox’s drunk Cowboy (actually an Indian) dissipates the role’s bitterness, irony and resonance. Jillian McWhirter is too young as Mrs. Janofsky, but Mike Reynolds, who plays her husband, is a model of an actor absolutely inhabiting a role.

You could imagine a more powerful cast lending Yablonsky’s play powder-keg force, but this marks a significant artistic leap for American Renegade, which has embraced a new work with requisite passion, and even fearlessness.

BE THERE

“Cracks in a Sidewalk,” American Renegade Theatre, 5303 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; 7 p.m. Sun. Indefinitely. Tickets are $12. (818) 763-4430.