Not Your Father’s ‘Godfather’

After its premiere in 1996 at Theatre East in Studio City, Seth Isler’s “The Godfather Workout,” a one-man restaging of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” took a road trip to Aspen’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival and to New York.

The trip is over, and Isler’s show has returned to where it began. For those wondering if Coppola ever saw it, the answer is yes--on the set of “The Conan O’Brien Show.” Like other performances by Steven Berkoff, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Los Trios Ringbarkus and John Fleck, Isler’s act truly defies description. Reviews have understandably failed to suggest the mad brilliance and daring of what Isler does on stage for a little over an hour.

Even one viewing doesn’t really allow you to absorb what he’s doing. So it’s good that Isler is back, if only through January.

Isler plunks you right down in the heart of “The Godfather” from scene one, when a businessman asks a crucial favor of Don Corleone, although he is delaying the Don from attending his daughter’s wedding.

The film begins flowing back into your head, even if you haven’t watched it for a while, and you realize that this actor is delivering the scene line by line, with a ringer impersonation of Brando.

By the way, Isler jumps over, under and across Corleone’s desk to play both men. Impossible. Which is what the best solo performers do. Fine, you think. He’s done one scene--there’s a whole, massively complicated movie to go, and he’s going to do all the scenes, all the roles? Well, no.

There are probably enough scenes missing from Isler’s condensation to bother “Godfather” fanatics. The Horse Head in the Bed isn’t here and neither is Diane Keaton’s big blowout scene. But what is here are key story points, especially Michael Corleone’s reluctant rise as a made man. This isn’t just an ultimate acting stunt but a carefully edited version of the original script.

Still, the word “workout” is in the title. Isler’s rapid, precision moves as he leaps from character to character are both amazing and absurd, recalling the military-like timing of the leaping in a Pina Bausch dance to Dick Van Dyke circa “Mary Poppins.” Isler constantly undermines the very idea of doing a solo “Godfather” by injecting satirical stabs along the way, from putting on a furry, feline hand puppet for Don Corleone to stroke, to jumping about in a climactic multi-character scene just for reaction shots.

Twisting “The Godfather” into something comic shouldn’t work, but it does here because Isler--immeasurably supported by director-producer Susan O’Sullivan and a mighty sextet of nattily dressed stage assistants--recognizes how the movie is now deeply embedded in our pop culture subconscious as few movies are.

On the surface, the show demonstrates the extremes to which L.A. actors will go to rise above the crowd. But beneath, it’s about how we happily allow movies to take possession of us. Isler has just taken it further than we’ve ever seen before.

BE THERE

“The Godfather Workout,” Theatre East, 12655 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. (Dark Jan. 7-8.) $7.50-$15. New Year’s Eve show and party: $35. (323) 936-4055. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.