Stage Light

“Short of Breath,” presented under the auspices of Theater of Hope for Abused Women, avoids the traps of agenda-pushing theater with its obsessive portrayal of a woman caught in a sexually subservient relationship while her brother is dying of AIDS.

Carrie Pittu’s hugely demanding solo performance at the Bitter Truth Theatre is really about revealing how many characters an actor can convey on stage.

The sheer number tends to become an onstage traffic jam, but no matter. Pittu’s stark, dexterous shifts from macho guys to her achingly observed schizophrenic mother to her dying brother, Jeffrey, gasping for breath, is a genuinely comic-tragic exercise in style and feeling.

Pittu is less interested in self-examination (why, we wonder, does her Carrie allow herself to become so obsessed by other people’s demands?) than she is in observing the swamp Carrie wallows in. The character Eddie, for example, is a disgusting goombah but such an outrageous stage figure, he draws us in even as we want to resist.

Eddie, the mother who works too hard to make herself the center of attention, and the AIDS ward nurse who is as interested in grabbing at sweets as in assisting patients are people who make us laugh even as we’re repelled.

It’s this caustic balancing act and Pittu’s sheer display of acting ability (under the direction of her brother, David Pittu), that makes “Short of Breath” recall the brilliant Steven Berkoff and his most recent solo show, “One Man.”

Following Pittu’s act is fairly impossible, and the accompanying one-act on the bill, director Theresa Larkin’s version of Edward Allen Baker’s “Dolores,” seems an awkward fit.

Recently reviewed in these pages, “Dolores” pits two sisters (Knekoh Fruge and Anna Primorac) against each other until they realize they share the pain of abusive husbands.

Unlike the recent version at the nearby Raven Playhouse, Larkin and her actors dig deeper into an inherently flawed work.

A kitchen set, though, is needed for this kitchen-sink play, but Fruge’s unnecessary, suffocating cigarette smoking is not.

“Short of Breath” and “Dolores,” Bitter Truth Theatre, 11050 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. (Dark this weekend.) Ends April 25. $12. (818) 766-9702. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.