West’s ‘Lemuel Pitkin’ Experiences the Dark Side of American Dream

The dark side of the American Dream was an endless source of macabre fascination for Nathanael West, the gifted satiric novelist whose untimely death in 1940 left behind only five published works. One of the more obscure titles in that slim legacy was “A Cool Million,” the mock heroic odyssey of a naive young New Englander who undergoes a series of horrific misadventures during the Great Depression.

With meticulous--and sometimes wearying--fidelity to West’s sardonic fable, R.A. White’s savage adaptation for Namaste Theatre Company’s “The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin” at Actors’ Gang captures all the signature comic grotesquerie of the original--and then some.

Forced into the cruel world to earn the funds to stave off the impending foreclosure of his widowed mother’s tiny cabin, West’s hapless protagonist (Mark Kelly) encounters an onslaught of human cruelty, greed and exploitation from a society of ruthless con artists, corrupt officials and sinister revolutionary zealots. In the process, Lem is systematically stripped of friends, family, possessions and even parts of his own body.

Idealism itself gets dismantled along with Lem in this wickedly cynical American myth, which plays like an Horatio Alger tale told by David Lynch. Lacing anachronistic allusions throughout (from sly parallels to genetic engineering to silly “Star Wars” puns) proves a double-edged strategy-- they link the piece more overtly to current social problems, but also clash with narrative elements set firmly in a 1931 economy.

The perfectly cast Kelly makes Lem a convincing corn-pone victim, enduring slings and arrows with unshakable if misplaced optimism. As the recurring figure of the unscrupulous ex-President Shagpoke Whipple, who serves as a latter-day Pangloss to Lem’s Candide, Hugh Adair sports the right imposing physical presence for a slick robber baron, but has trouble mustering the character’s electrifying charisma when needed.

The episodic structure affords a field day for the energetic 11-member cast to don multiple roles, though none go beyond sharp-edged caricature--a limitation inherited from West’s cartoonish novella. Unfortunately, the subtle stylistic ironies that sustain interest and delight in the written work don’t translate to the theatrical medium, though director Michael Uppendahl livens things up with some inventive visual staging.

BE THERE

The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin, Actors’ Gang Theatre, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 3. $15. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.