Treating Mother Earth as a ‘Home’ Improvement Job

“Home Project: An Eco-Cabaret” aches with earnest, green, good feelings. The Beachworks Theatre Company production at the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s Theatre 2 consists of ecology-minded scenes from great plays, pieces inspired by newspaper reports, as well as original works. Still, it doesn’t form a well-integrated whole. It’s more didactic than engaging.

Writer Gary Amdahl used interviews with an environmental engineer as the basis for three “true fables.” These stories feature a puppet, manipulated by David Strausberger, to portray a scientist, while Nicole Burleson narrates.

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In “Dumpster Angel,” Daniel Lynch Millner is suspended on a swing above a large dumpster, performing adapted liner notes from the musical artist Moby. Other angels wearing gas masks appear throughout, though subsequent interactions are sometimes too cutesy.

In “Mad Professor Talks About the Past,” an adaptation from Nicky Silver’s “Pterodactyls,” Sarah Holbert is a very pregnant professor who spews malapropisms. This lecturer resurfaces in Amdahl’s “Mad Professor Talks About the Future.”

Ross Crutchlow is funnily fruity as the title character in “Aunt Helen Goes Greek,” an adaptation of the Bible and Aeschylus’ “Eumenides.”

In a more serious juxtaposition of past and present, Dr. Astrov’s map speech from Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” is effectively intercut with interviews from survivors of the Chernobyl disaster. After a fact-based piece on water, Millner and Strausberger are the “Stockmann Brothers,” an edited scene from Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People.”

This energetic ensemble, under the direction of Chris Beach, musters only workmanlike readings of the masterpieces.

The only standout is Holbert, who, with her perky, short-cropped, ultra-blond hairdo, sparkles in all her appearances. Her movements under choreographer Ming Ng are notably sharper and more confident than those of the others.

BE THERE

“Home Project: An Eco-Cabaret,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theatre 2, 514 S. Spring St., downtown L.A.. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends May 7. $12. (213) 485-1681. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.