E.T.-Themed ‘Time’: Hilarity, Call Home

When your baby is abducted by extraterrestrials, who you gonna call?

Maria Gregory (Charmaine Cruz) is convinced that space aliens have stolen her child. In her quest for knowledge, Maria attends a convention of UFO enthusiasts, where she meets Franz Webber (Gregory Littman), a New Age guru who preaches that the time is nigh for humans and aliens to merge as one species. Speaking of merging, lecherous Franz has pegged Maria as his newest acolyte, and Maria is ripe for conversion--among other things.

Michael R. Farkash’s “Stolen Time” at the Cast tries to be a tongue-in-cheek “Peyton Place” for the lunatic fringe. With his high-concept premise, Farkash, who also directs, sets the stage for high hilarity--but delivers, at best, only the occasional lukewarm chuckle.

Farkash’s comedy is strained, his staging stilted, the bulk of his cast awkward in the extreme. The only actors who inject some novelty into the proceedings are Lisa Demke as a bird-like believer who longs to be ravished by hyper-potent space reptiles, and Michael Sollenberger as Maria’s obnoxious boss, a skeptic whose belief system is in for a shake-up.

The Cast, which has devoted itself in recent years solely to the works of Justin Tanner, is now trying to provide a platform for more varied dramatic voices. But judging from Farkash’s misbegotten effort, literary manager Tanner and managing director Andy Daley need to exercise better judgment in choosing their theater’s season. A general fumigation of the physical facility also would be nice, so that the cast doesn’t have to compete for stage time with enormous insects crashing about their heads like wayward satellites.

*

* “Stolen Time,” Cast Theatre, 804 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Ends Nov. 4. $13.50-$15. (213) 462-0265. Running time: 1 hour,5 minutes.