‘Onstage’: Skilled Presentation of the Familiar

The Zephyr Theatre’s “Onstage Tonight” is a charming bill of two one-acts, deftly performed and staged.

The scenarios are familiar: actors waiting to be discovered and an Italian American family’s gathering. But it’s the delivery and characterizations that make these fun.

Written by Bruce Blair, Lynn Clark, Mary Kate Cunningham, Elizabeth Lavoie and Justine Slater, “The Working Actor” is about three women who suffer indignities in different facets of the food service industry while dreaming of a career in acting. The separate stories of the women (Clark, Lavoie and Slater) are simultaneously told with admirable timing.

In Steve Scionti and James Shanta’s “The Gathering: U Cunzulu,” solo performer Scionti calls to life an odd assortment of characters: boastful uncles, angry brothers, feverishly repressed teachers and his disco-era self. According to Sicilian custom, the family is meeting after the funeral of the maternal grandfather.

Although the piece seems overly long, director Shanta displays all the right instincts, flowing from silly to sorrowful without a hitch.

* “Onstage Tonight,” Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Tuesdays, 8 p.m. Ends Nov. 25. $15; $25 for two. (818) 753-3302. Running time: 2 hours.

‘Joe Turner’ Leans to the Ponderous In the program for “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” at the Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre, we are told that the setting is a 1911 Pittsburgh boardinghouse and “the sun falls out of heaven like a stone.” Unfortunately, so does this production.

August Wilson’s play is supposed to be both dark and mysterious. Yet under the direction of Stevi Meredith, the stifling shadow of slavery and racism never rises. Instead, the lyrical quality of the script and the mystical world remain entombed by stilted, one-dimensional characterizations.

On a Saturday in August, an angry stranger, Herald (K.D. Jones), comes to Seth (played by alternate Ernest Jackson) and Bertha Holly’s (Joahn Webb) boarding house. Accompanied by his daughter Zonia (Jazmine L. Stein), Herald is searching for his wife Martha (Angie Fullilove). Among the boarding house regulars are the magic-practicing Bynum (Frederick D. Tucker) and Jeremy (Louie Ski Carr). Jeremy has just brought in a woman to live with him, Mattie (Melanie Lee), but he finds himself attracted to another newcomer, Molly (Louahn Lowe).

But the characters are never fleshed out. Even Lee as the soon-to-be-dumped Mattie seems oblivious to the obvious, and all too accepting. Director Meredith never lifts this play into the gray areas between the concrete, physical world and the unknown. Without the depth of character or the uncertainty of reality, all suspense is crushed under the ponderous weight of the shallow and literal interpretation.

* “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” Studio Theatre, Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Nov. 16, 23, 2 p.m. Ends Nov. 29. $12-$15. (562) 494-1616. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.