Shouting for Effect

The road to bad theater is paved with good intentions.

“The Silent Scream,” a trilogy of one-acts and excerpts now playing at the Actors Forum Theatre, is meant to jolt us out of our complacency, to identify the insidious threat of fascism.

But the selection of work about Nazi Germany is so backward-looking and blunt that it almost makes one nostalgic for a fictional time when threats seemed so obvious. Murphy Guyer’s “Loyalties” is a vignette that takes place over dessert in an apartment. Rudy (Michael Rush) is the militaristic husband who blathers on proudly about his patriotism, clashing with poet and individualist Jacob (Nick O’Connor).

Sisters Monica (Hope Shapiro) and Katherine (Ginger Drake) have their own family loyalties strained by the arguing of their respective mates. The bickering goes on in generalities until Rudy has to dress for work. To no one’s surprise, he’s a Nazi soldier.

Rush plays Rudy as a total brute, a mindless follower, divesting his side of the argument of all appeal, and thus the play of the power of luring the audience into sympathy.

Bertolt Brecht’s “The Jewish Wife” has potential for subtlety, but the repetitive structure becomes grating.

The wife (Ursula Christian) is packing to leave Nazi Germany--and her husband. She packs, talks aloud to her absent husband, fiddles with her jewelry, and makes a phone call. Then she does it all again. And again. It requires superior acting to get away with the forced device of talking aloud to no one, and Christian doesn’t make it work. Director Audrey M. Singer’s workmanlike pacing and circular staging do little for this play’s cause.

And when the husband arrives home--the moments that could be interesting--what little dramatic tension there was is released, as if out of a half-filled balloon.

Between these two playlets is a momentary lapse into insanity. In some strange half-drag outfit, a bare-chested Larry Lederman cracks a few jokes and sings “Willkommen” from “Cabaret.” The whole thing seems terribly embarrassing for Lederman--or maybe the audience is just embarrassed for him--but is also completely out of pitch with the rest of the evening.

It is surprising then, when Lederman turns in an appropriately stoic and somewhat chilling performance as Ernst Janning, a judge on trial at Nuremberg for enforcing Nazi laws. His monologue--an admission of guilt on the broadest scale--is the most compelling moment of the evening.

This excerpt from Abby Mann’s script for the film “Judgment at Nuremberg” is, however, stripped of much of its power because it loses all context. Singer gives us the climax without building to it. Robert Testut is awkward and unconvincing as the defense attorney, his speech hesitations more distracting than realistic.

What are we left with at the end of this three-pronged attack? Nazis are bad? This news hardly jolts anyone out of complacency. And as a historic portrait of a time, “The Silent Scream” is too scattershot to hit its target.

BE THERE

“The Silent Scream,” at the Actors Forum Theatre, 10655 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Ends Aug. 29. $12.50. (818) 506-0600.