Coppola Holds Interest in Slight ‘DeVivo Variation’

As a performer, John Coppola knows how to put across a solo show--even when there’s not really much of a story to tell. “The DeVivo Variation,” at Hudson Avenue Theatre, is loosely based on Coppola’s life and has been adapted from Coppola’s own stories by co-writers Judith Rudnicki and Jonuel Pozo.

At the outset, Johnny DeVivo, Coppola’s semiautobiographical alter ego, recapitulates his childhood experiences with epilepsy. By age 3, DeVivo informs us, he is being massively dosed with phenobarbital to control his potentially lethal seizures. After his condition is misdiagnosed as a learning disability, DeVivo spends his childhood in a state of benumbed torpor--a sensation he later tries to recapture as an adolescent through drug abuse.

As the high-energy Coppola presents it, this is harrowing, hilarious stuff. Whirling around the stage like a finger-snapping dervish, Coppola rivets our interest even after the play segues into a mundane recounting of DeVivo’s early travails in show business.

Stefan Rudnicki directs, with Michal Terra as movement coach--and their combined efforts result in a seamless, sinuous whole. The show soars when it centers on the vivid characters and events from DeVivo’s Brooklyn upbringing. Unfortunately, the evening concludes on a note of contrived profundity that proves a hard sell, even for the able Coppola.

* “The DeVivo Variation,” Hudson Avenue Theatre, 1110 Hudson Ave., Hollywood. Mondays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends May 14. $15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.