2 New Plays Belie Valley’s Brady-Bunch Image, Resolve Little

I had an aisle-seat view of the Valley last weekend, and it wasn’t pretty.

In “Girls Night Out,” seven women screwed up one another’s lives at a karaoke bar in Van Nuys. In “(818),” two men screwed up each other’s lives at their West Valley apartment.

So much for “The Brady Bunch” image of the Valley.

Early in “Girls Night Out,” at the Two Roads Theatre, Pam (Lynn A. Henderson) delivers a rant about stalking and then seducing a man, which ranges from silly to needlessly graphic. For better or worse, the tone is set.

Henderson, an actress some might recognize from her recurring role as a paramedic on “ER,” seems to have learned a lot from TV. Perhaps too much. Her debut writing effort has the look and feel of a two-hour sitcom, but ventures into areas completely inappropriate for such treatment.

For example, there are laughs when Pam tells her best friend Melissa (Shay Jordan) that she was date-raped by Dean (Patrick Foley) years before. Worse, after Dean forces himself on another woman at the end of the play, all is forgiven and forgotten after the woman says that she would’ve had sex with him later, if she’d had a chance to tell him she was a virgin and discuss birth control first.

That final scene plays like a farce, with half the cast hiding in the ladies room, only to surprise Dean with his pants around his ankles. Meantime, though, Stevie (Rhonda Lee Dorton) has caught her girlfriend Roberta (Lacie Harmon) fooling around with Melissa, who is married to a man. The result is lines like this: “Hey, guys, I’m glad you’re all working things out, but we have a woman who was raped here.”

Ouch.

But somehow there are no ramifications for any of these characters. All is forgiven and, naturally, they all reconvene at the karaoke bar to sing a closing number.

If anything is refreshing about “Girls Night Out” it is that the characters--black, white, gay and straight--are connected, quite simply, by friendship. That’s not to say that they ignore their differences--in fact, these are the moments when Henderson touches on real emotion. Pam, who is black, has a pointed fight with her white roommate, Theresa (Heather Gunn). Unfortunately, the scene ultimately descends into melodrama when Theresa sings a defiant karaoke version of “Dixie.” Theresa then makes friends with the racist bartender, leaving an important issue unresolved.

Bad lines aside, the performances are solid and the whole thing moves quickly under Deborah Kellar’s direction. The karaoke bar set by Donald Wayne Jarman is handsome and realistic. If only the entire production didn’t cry out for a three-camera setup.

The counterpart to the hyper-social women in “Girls Night Out” are the two loser roommates in “(818),” an 80-minute one-act at Zombie Joe’s Underground in Reseda. Actor/director Josh R. Ryan asserts that the play is about “the numbed out and intoxicated television existence” of life in the Valley.

Indeed. When the characters are so bored they have to get stoned, you know the audience is in trouble. But the real warning sign pops up, literally, from behind the sofa. That’s where two characters representing Alex’s subconscious--the romantic Percy (Belinda Reser) and the Hitler-styled Deiter (Dan Phifer, also the playwright)--lurk until they get a chance to bicker over the next move for Alex (Andrew Milton). The last time I saw this device was in an episode of “The Flintstones.”

The plot, in summary: Alex’s life is stagnant, which he equates with needing sex. He finally meets a girl, Roxy (Ellen Brown), who also starts sleeping with Alex’s roommate, Andy (Aaron Brandes). (That any woman would date either of these men, let alone both, boggles the mind.) Alex seeks quick revenge. The end.

The play, however, contains the only thematic use of a Rick Springfield song I’ve ever encountered. The scene in which Andy sings along to “Jesse’s Girl” is the funniest “(818)” has to offer. Ryan also does a funny turn as Sporty, the white guy who thinks he is black. But after these humorous asides, how are we to interpret Alex’s morose and suicidal thoughts? As parody?

Zombie Joe’s Underground, by the way, is in a Reseda garage, with about 40 plastic lawn chairs and a few benches for seats. The setting would be acceptable--appreciated, even--if the production delivered something beyond sophomoric humor and overwrought railing against the tediousness of life.

Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group operates under a credo they call the Progressive Theatre of Horror, drawing inspiration from Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty. Artaud, though, was concerned with the precariousness of morality. There isn’t much to suggest that the characters in “(818)” felt particularly morally bound in the first place.

BE THERE

“Girls Night Out,” at the Two Roads Theatre, 4348 Tujunga Ave., Studio City. Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Sun. at 7 p.m. through Nov. 9. $15. (818) 753-0763.

“(818),” Zombie Joe’s Underground, 18552 Sherman Way (enter from alley off Baird Avenue), Reseda. Thurs.-Sat. at 9 p.m. through Oct. 18. $10. (818) 948-6889.