A Matter of Desire

Desire is a touchy thing. What do we need? What do we simply want? And what will we sacrifice to get either?

These questions and others are at the center of “Cravings,” the second installment in the Alliance Repertory Company’s one-act festival.

The Alliance seems to like Christopher Durang’s plays, and the company is well-suited to his off-beat sensibility. In “Business Lunch at the Russian Tea Room,” playwright Chris (Todd Robert Anderson) is wooed by a Hollywood producer over borscht. She wants him to write a sensitive movie--about a rabbi and a priest who fall in love and have sex-change operations.

Anderson has a likable Tom Hanks-ish quality, and is nicely understated as he struggles through the surreal meeting, carrying his laundry.

Robin Middleton, as the producer, is perfectly ridiculous as she prattles on about her “ideas.” Stephen Liska is a great supporting player as both the waiter and the priest.

“Business Lunch,” one suspects, is a funnier play when done outside Los Angeles. It’s the obligatory serious playwright confronts the absurdity of Hollywood story. But it’s not over-the-top enough, really, to rattle an audience that probably has had its own such dealings.

Avery Hart’s “Dreamboats” is a fairly predictable collection of bad dates dramatized. Susan (Susan Wright), after being dumped by loser Roger (Shawn Michael O’Hern), endures one weirdo after another, from the guy who lives with his mother to the sex-crazed lawyer. Directed by Steve Skelton, the various dates are appropriately sleazy. Wright is charming and vulnerable, except for a segment where she recaps other bad dates while laughing in an artificial manner.

The last play on the bill, “Does This Woman Have a Name?” concerns a writer and actress who team up to make some cash by creating phone-sex fantasies. Mel (LaMar Aguilar) scripts the fantasies to order and Sarah (Hilary Davis) performs them. It seems a fine arrangement, except that it is destroying Mel’s relationship with her boyfriend, John (Greg Forshay).

Theresa Rebeck’s play has the potential to address interesting questions of feminism and free commerce. Why does Mel find it acceptable to receive money for feigning intimacy over the phone--but beneath her dignity to accept money from her well-paid boyfriend? What part of oneself is one willing to sell--and to whom?

These issues surface but aren’t completely realized. Rebeck’s script doesn’t explain Mel’s attraction to phone sex, and gets hung up at the end on reuniting her with John.

Director Claudia Sloan, meantime, fails to get her cast working together; it is as if there are three acting styles on display. Likewise, she doesn’t focus the play on the important points--which also aren’t laid out in the dialogue.

Finally, credit goes to the Alliance for the funniest set changes in recent memory--a device they also used last month in the first part of the festival, “Mirage.” With Russian dancers, cross-dressers--who needs to sit uncomfortably in the dark when there are laughs to be had?

BE THERE

“Cravings” at the Alliance Repertory Company, 3204 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 6:30 p.m. Ends Oct. 25. $12. (323) 660-8587.