Holiday Chaos in the Spirit of Fa-La-La Land

“For Here or to Go?” tells a story of Los Angeles residents celebrating, variously, the holidays of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas and Ramadan. Sounds straightforward enough.

Well! The Cornerstone Theater Company’s “15th Anniversary, City-Wide, Jumbo-Sized, Extra-Value Holiday Show” (in rhyming verse, yet) is based, loosely, on Francis Beaumont’s 1607 comedy “The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” in which a performance of a play is interrupted by audience members.

The interruptions come early and often. In “For Here or to Go?” the musical numbers include a rendition of “The Impossible Dream,” sung (according to the program--not the “fake” program you receive on the way in, but the “real” one you get on the way out) by characters listed as “Burger King Workers and LAPD Officers.” Most of the cops are played by real cops. And their kick-line technique is beyond compare.

There’s something in this bit that warms the soul while getting its laughs: a show tune, uniting law enforcement with a multiethnic minimum-wage bunch of fast-food hambones who hijack the show whenever they can. This, truly, is the defining moment for Los Angeles on the cusp of 2001--Rodney King’s “get-along” plea made real.

If the above makes the Cornerstone show, in a limited run at the Mark Taper Forum this week, sound like an amiable mess, well, it is that. Director-playwright Shishir Kurup lets the play-within-a-play conceit wander near the 2 1/2-hour mark. It’s by turns spirited and labored.

Yet even when it dawdles, there’s a sweetness in the show’s heart-on-sleeve, deconstructionist approach to doing an L.A. holiday show. It’s hard to resist the sight of a disparate stage full of Cornerstone actors, longtime company regulars and various community graduates of past Cornerstone projects, all urging their fellow warriors onward in the noble fight for “the soul of Los Angeles.”

The premise is a Christmas Eve eviction. Mr. and Mrs. Merchant (Larry Dozier and Theodora Hardie) have lost the lease on their soul-food restaurant. Down the block a new Burger King has opened and sucked away all their business.

The Merchants’ daughter Luce (Gracy Brown) has two suitors: the waiter Nabil (Ahmad Enani) and the smarmy landlord, Mr. Humphrey (Peter Howard). Meantime, in another part of the city, Ms. Chen (Page Leong) and her daughter June (Emily Hong) have run out of money and are about to head back to San Francisco.

The stories crisscross and intermingle, eventually traveling to Jerusalem. But “For Here or to Go?” by design goes off the rails early on. Kurup becomes a major, increasingly frazzled character in the proceedings. His actors rebel and argue and worry over all the rhyming verse. Audience members (played by actors) join the action, while the cast refers longingly to the “original” straightforward version of the piece.

The interruptions begin when the owner (Bruce Friedman) of a Burger King franchise objects to the play’s portrayal of multinational fast-food chains. Soon his entire morning-shift crew has entered the world of the play, the chorus backing Employee of the Month Rafa (Omar Gomez).

They literally run away with the show. In the end, Kurup learns to let go of the production. Actress Leong overcomes her fear of improvisation, in a scene requiring her to pretend to fly and land a faulty airplane. (“I did it!” she says. “I improv-ed!”)

Some of this is pretty disarming, though the structure-busting detours lack any sort of rhythm. Through it all, Kurup, playing the harried field marshal, tries to integrate all voices, all points of view. (He’s a sensitive liberal artist’s quandary, squared.)

Kurup and company get around to honoring the holidays, in their own way. L.A., they argue, is a holy land, by virtue of Kwanzaa being born here. Taking aim at our fast-food, stressed-out natures, “For Here or to Go?”--as one lyric self-describes it, the strangest show you’ll see all year--has the courage of its central belief in L.A. as a blessed place. Thwarted, but blessed. And the show has the sponsorship of the Taper, which is nice.

A few years ago on the Taper stage Anna Deavere Smith played half of L.A. in “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992.” To mixed but ingratiating results, Cornerstone presents the other half--as themselves.

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* “For Here or to Go?” Cornerstone Theater Company at the Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. Tuesday-Wednesday, 8 p.m.; Thursday, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Ends Sunday. $25; students, seniors, public rush, $12. Pay-what-you-can Thursday 2:30 p.m. (213) 628-2772. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

Page Leong: Ms. Chen

Emily Hong: June

Ahmad Enani: Nabil

George Haddad: Jiddu

Larry Dozier: Mr. Merchant

Theodora Hardie’: Mrs. Merchant

Gracy Brown: Luce

Armando Molina: Mr. Garcia

Peter Howard: Mr. Humphrey

Written and directed by Shishir Kurup. Songs by Michael Abels and Shishir Kurup. Musical direction by Michael Abels. Scenic design by Lynn Jeffries. Costumes by Christopher Acebo. Lighting by Geoff Korf. Sound by Paul James. Choreography by Jessica Wallenfels. Fight direction by Randy Kovitz. Stage manager Paula Donnelly.