A Thought-Provoking Visit With ‘Babysitter’

If you could hear the thoughts of everyone all at once, what kind of world would it be?

In Victor D’Altorio and Henrietta Pearsall’s abstract staging of Robert Coover’s short story “The Babysitter” at the McCadden Theatre, a frightening though sometimes humorous orchestra of fantasies merges with the seemingly mundane reality of an attractive teenage girl baby-sitting.

Although their baby-sitter (Rhonda Patterson) arrives a little late, the Tuckers aren’t quite ready to leave for a party. There’s something subtly flirtatious about the girl’s blue satin-sheen shirt that constantly comes untucked from her olive-green flared skirt.

She glimpses at the not-quite-dressed father ducking into the bedroom. Mrs. Tucker (Winifred Freedman) is cross, having squeezed into a girdle a size too small.

Mr. Tucker (John Eric Montana) lusts after the baby-sitter. Did she see him half-dressed? Did she like what she saw? He recalls the bareness of her legs above her bobby socks.

Her boyfriend Jack (Keith Bogart) has sexually curious thoughts that are pushed into threatening gang-bang scenarios by his more experienced and less principled friend, Mark (James C. Leary). They play pinball games as if practicing sexual domination, hoping to visit the baby-sitter after the children are asleep.

The children, Jimmy (Darin Toonder) and Bitsy (T.L. Brooke), want to test the sitter’s patience. What can they get away with tonight?

These wildly disparate wishes fly back and forth as explanations or as provocative hypothetical scenarios. At the party, Mr. Tucker imagines patting the baby-sitter’s derriere in his drunken stupor, catching himself in time to change the gesture into a golf swing. Mr. Tucker and Jack conjure up various dreams of sexual conquest in which the sitter is either languidly willing or poignantly fearful, transitions that Patterson handles with ease.

Set on a monochrome minimalist stage with Rand Ryan’s crisp lighting design, cast members pop their heads up from behind a wall. Their disembodied heads act as a Greek chorus, punctuating Pearsall’s narration and the action taking place in front of the partition.

According to the program notes, D’Altorio and Pearsall didn’t change Coover’s text, taken from his 1969 short-story collection, “Pricksongs and Descants.” The division and overlapping of dialogue and the visual impact of the bobbing heads backstage or the spotlighted characters upstage seamlessly lead us through the metafictional nightmare.

This presentation by the Parallax Theater is a well-acted and well-considered 90 minutes of thought-provoking entertainment.

* “The Babysitter,” McCadden Theatre, 1157 McCadden Place, Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 12. $20. (323) 960-7896. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

‘Molested Shoes’: Bar the Closet, Imelda

“Molested Shoes” isn’t about kinky, fetish sex. It’s a mismatched amalgamation of two different one-person performance pieces. Consisting of Simone Gad’s tiresome “Molested at the Movies” and Bennett Schneider’s wacky “Shoes,” this bill at the Glaxa Studios definitely saves the best for last.

The bespectacled Gad looks like a character straight out of a Roz Chast comic strip. Her whispery whine-tinged voice belies her husky frame. Her piece covers her childhood and botched singing career among other things, and it wears thin quickly.

The shoes that border the black stage, the partition that suspends a lavender curtain and the black pallet are all for Bennett’s piece. Looking like Ichabod Crane with his un-Californian extreme pallor, narrow chest, skinny arms and legs, and beak nose, Bennett takes full advantage of his odd appearance.

He has audience members select six shoes from the 30-odd pairs and place them on the altar where he channels the spirit of the soles for a winning meditation on shoes.

Behind the curtain he has an array of props. On the night I attended, the stories ranged from pseudo-intellectual lecturing to loopy love tales.

Oh, what could this man do with Imelda’s closet?

* “Molested Shoes,” Glaxa Studios, 3707 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. $10. Ends Feb. 5. (323) 661-5246. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

‘Suite’ Shows Potential in Its Second Half

Frank Strausser’s “The Powder Room Suite” is supposed to be two dark, provocative comedies, but there is little to laugh about.

The two one-acts, “The Powder Room” and “Valentine Triage,” at the Court Theatre, aren’t really black comedy, and the latter isn’t really a comedy at all.

In “The Powder Room,” the time is now and the instructor (Sally Kirkland) is leading a writers’ workshop based on her book, “The Woman’s Journey,” at a state university campus. Six women and one man have enrolled.

The instructor suffers from unsettled personal issues of father-daughter incest that manifest themselves in hysterical tirades, often directed at the sole man in class. The premise that the instructor would not have expected or already confronted everything from male hecklers to supportive sensitive guys is more than a little shaky. Men do appear at women’s studies courses and in book tour audiences, so the “intrusion” should not come as a surprise.

Strausser further strains credibility by making the “male” (Robert Casey) seem unbelievably oblivious to the angry reception he receives. Director Rob Brownstein doesn’t adequately mitigate these problems. He does, however, elicit an emotionally honest performance from Kirkland, who notably eschews any of the trappings of glamour.

In “Valentine Triage,” a couple plays a seductive game of love and lust. “He” (Marcus Graham) and “she” (Cameocara Martine) are engaged in the horizontal mambo, groaning and grinding out their own music in a dimly lit living room. In postcoital horror, she suddenly realizes the condom has broken.

This crisis redefines their relationship in misleading ways, as they rush to get her a morning-after pill. The emotional twists would have had more impact if Strausser had resisted putting some PC polemics in, recited by Kirkland as the triage nurse.

Still, director Randy Brenner draws out credible characterizations and a sly transition of power between the two characters. This piece has more potential and rings more true than the other half of the bill.

* “The Powder Room Suite,” Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays 2 and 7 p.m. $25 to $30. Ends Feb. 20. (310) 289-2999. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.