‘Duck’ Uncommitted to Absurd Comedy

“Do we have to go through this song and dance every hour on the hour?” complains Sissy (Pamela Levin), a reluctant patient of the Albert Einstein Medical Center, now locked in a padded isolation cell.

In the case of this one-woman show, “The Quiet Room or What Happens When a Schizoid Ballerina Is Locked in a Room With a Duck,” at the Whitefire Theater, once is definitely enough.

Playing the manic-depressive Sissy, Levin tries too hard to be funny, and the cynic might wonder if her mood turns and personality changes might be opportunistic showcasing.

Directors Kathy Kerns and Paul Melia do make Levin fill up the space with interesting movement and confident declarations. Yet the script does nothing to enlighten us on the medical condition of a woman who has suffered 247 breakdowns and undergone 5,000 shocks.

The duck, a worn fuchsia-colored slipper that Levin uses as a hand puppet, adds almost nothing, except that it allows such lines as, “I could be raped [by the duck]; I’ll have a child with webbed feet,” and “I’ve committed suicide; I’ve swallowed a duck.”

Never does the duck seem an uncontrolled threat, and Levin touches neither comic absurdity nor emotional morass. Her wild rantings are one-dimensional and largely unsympathetic, making one happy when the stage finally becomes a quiet room.

*

* “The Quiet Room or What Happens When a Schizoid Ballerina Is Locked in a Room With a Duck,” Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends March 21. $15. (818) 753-3344. Running time: 1 hour.