Berlin Meets L.A.

Before “Angels in America,” Tony Kushner wrote “A Bright Room Called Day,” shrilly drawing comparisons between the rise of the Third Reich and the indifference of Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan to the AIDS epidemic. Scenes from the cozy apartment of one particular Berliner, Agnes, were “interrupted” by the contemporary voice of a Jewish American woman named Zillah.

In a visually lush, well-acted production at the Theatre of NOTE, Steven Leigh Morris’ emendations soften Kushner’s heavy-handed polemics into an uneasy, subtle questioning of personal concessions and the uncomfortable alliance between fringe commerce and fringe journalism.

The original Zillah preoccupied herself with writing daily nastigrams to Reagan, but her occupation was never defined. Morris’ Zillah (Tamar Fortgang) is an art critic for an alternative newspaper, much like the L.A. Weekly, where Morris is the theater editor. At the performance reviewed, a copy of the Weekly was a prop.

Zillah learns that her unseen neighbor emigrated from Odessa in the Ukraine only to become a prostitute in Los Angeles--Zillah sees the woman’s daughter waiting on a bus bench while the mother turns tricks in her condo. The neighbor advertises in Zillah’s publication, and Zillah is haunted by a queasy ethical dilemma.

Morris’ position at the paper adds extra dimension to this part of the play. Zillah might be seen as his alter ego, pondering the incongruity of writing serious criticism for a publication that features so many adult entertainment ads.

This isn’t the first time Zillah’s role has been changed. For the London production, Kushner made her anti-Thatcher.

Zillah is also obsessed with a woman from an old photograph in a book about the Hitler era. This woman, unlike the other Germans around her, did not return the fascist salute. She may be Agnes (Sarah Lilly), a middle-aged, pleasantly plump cinema bit player, who has gathered friends at her apartment to celebrate New Year’s Day 1932.

By 1933, each of her friends--the fastidious homosexual Baz (Thom Cagle), the selfish minor film celebrity Paulinka (Dorie Barton), the Communist graphic designer Annabella (Cathy Carlton), Agnes’ Hungarian lover, Husz (Stewart Skelton)--will flee Berlin. Agnes stays because she’s too afraid to do anything else, finding only enough begrudging courage to offer one night’s refuge to a former associate.

Director Gleason Bauer’s light touch complements Morris’ tenuous linking of Los Angeles to Berlin. Yet Bauer (also credited with set and costume design) and costume designer Pascale Nyby make the Berliners glamorous, in contrast to Zillah, who wears worn sweats while sitting in a crammed corner. Jesse H. Rivard and Jonathan Klein’s lighting design gives Agnes’ apartment a romantic glow.

BE THERE

“‘A Bright Room Called Day,” Theatre of NOTE, 1517 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Sunday, May 14, 21, 28, 4 p.m. Ends May 28. $12-$15. (323) 856-8611. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.