Stage Light

It may be that the newly opened Secret Rose Theatre, with a hoped-for programming philosophy leaning toward Asian themes, will be the East West Players of the Valley.

And like East West, it may also take the Secret Rose some time to find its artistic way. On the evidence of the premiere show, a revival of the ultra-obscure 1900 melodrama “Madame Butterfly” by David Belasco, the theater needs all the time it can get.

To be sure, the group was hit with a tragedy on the eve of opening in February. Director Mercedes Shirley died during rehearsals, and yet the show went on.

It appears, though, to have gone on without any directorial substitute. The cast is almost uniformly wooden and awkward, with some actors seeming (at least Saturday night) to make up lines as they go along out of forgetfulness. The pregnant pauses in the action are more than studied, ritualized Japanese behavior, but instead convey a feeling that landlubbers are boarding a boat on choppy waters for the first time.

None of this helps a play that’s a genuine antique--fine in the furniture trade, bad in the theater trade. Written as a one-act, Belasco’s story covers all the broad strokes that soon after inspired Giacomo Puccini to create “Madama Butterfly,” the opera. Not only is the absurdly melodramatic activity--especially of Butterfly herself (an uneven Kaz Mata-Mura)--far better suited to opera’s way with out-size emotions and excess, but this is also a creature that audiences know refashioned so brilliantly by David Henry Hwang in his Tony-winning play “M. Butterfly.”

Although Hwang, using a true story, turned the old “Butterfly’s” notions of fragile womanhood inside out, all we’re left with in this production is the old, musty original. With or without director Shirley, the cast’s lack of inspiration betrays a lack of faith in the material--which begs the question of doing this as your opening act.

Actually, the evening’s opening act (a mere 10 minutes, oddly followed by intermission) is a two-part dance performance on themes of the geisha, Butterfly’s sad profession. The welcoming dance, or Makuake, was imprecise Saturday, although the dance titled Gion Ko Uta suggested a lithe whimsy utterly missing from the rest of the evening.

“Madame Butterfly,” Secret Rose Theatre, 11246 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 28. $18. (310) 559-1448. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.