Here, Murder Is Just One of the ‘Nasty Little Secrets’

Lanie Robertson’s “Nasty Little Secrets” at Theatre/Theater details the 15-year affair between Joe Orton, up-and-coming enfant terrible of the London theater, and Kenneth Halliwell, Orton’s mentor-turned-murderer.

Robertson’s play ran off-Broadway in 1988 and again in 1998--although why it was deemed worthy of a revival is difficult to gather from this West Coast premiere, despite newly rewritten material by the playwright.

Veteran stage director David Galligan oversees this choppy outing, which features Brant Cotton as the outrageous Orton and Travis Michael Holder as his schlumpy, tormented older lover.

Stuart McLean plays the mustache-twirling constable who busts the duo for defacing Her Majesty’s library books, while the rubber-faced Ian Abercrombie appears as Orton’s venal literary manager.

Vaulting back and forth in time between 1952 and 1967, the action is set primarily in Orton and Halliwell’s bed-sitter in the Islington Station section of London. The sparse set by Werkaby, the theater’s resident design collective, successfully conveys the pair’s impoverished circumstances, although having the actors pull Union Jack curtains across the playing area during periodic set changes seems a cumbersome device.

The period music in Michael W. Brown’s crisp sound design is occasionally heavy-handed (Halliwell murders his lover to the psychedelic strains of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”), while the lighting cues were so botched at the reviewed performance that it was difficult to assess the merits of Brown’s lighting design.

Aside from the fact that Robertson’s play is essentially devoid of suspense (we are keenly aware all along that this diseased relationship will prove terminal), this production suffers from plodding pacing and off-kilter performances, largely due to Galligan’s oddly uneven direction.

Just as Robertson’s drama segues from the surreal to the everyday, so Galligan’s staging veers from muted to over-the-top--an unsuccessful tack that puts his actors at a persistent disadvantage. While certainly ambitious, the entire enterprise seems rough-edged, under-rehearsed, and strangely arbitrary in tone, especially considering the extensive credits of those involved.

Although physically perfect for his role, Cotton fails to capture Orton’s anarchic cheekiness. Holder fares better in his brave and (literally) revealing turn. However, those who want light shed on Orton and Halliwell’s peculiar and pitiable dynamic would be better off reading John Lahr’s biography “Prick Up Your Ears” or renting the film based on that book.

* “Nasty Little Secrets,” Theatre/Theater, 6425 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Indefinitely. $15. (323) 871-9433. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

‘Factory Girls’: What’s the Intended Product?

Frank McGuinness’ “Factory Girls,” at the Odyssey Theatre, is a grueling shift. First produced at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in the early 1980s, McGuinness’ drama about downtrodden Irish textile workers who strike to protect their jobs would be a problematic play given an optimum production. In Linda Biseti’s piecemeal staging, it is laborious.

Set in Donegal in 1972, the play revolves around the central figure of Ellen (Elena McGhee), a short-fused woman whose husband and children all died within months of one another. When unscrupulous new factory owner Rohan (Thom Cagle, in a painfully arch turn) decides to start trimming staff and increasing production quotas, Ellen and her fellow factory drudges barricade themselves in his office for a long siege.

The political protest soon segues into slumber party mode. Freely swapping confidences and poteen, the gals bond, banter and scamper about like leprechauns in the glen. Of course, tensions flare and recriminations follow, but McGuinness’ philosophical donnybrook is so completely baffling that it feels as if some crucial last scene has been omitted from the play.

The entire production has a thrown-together, last-minute quality, from Chris Kittrell’s rudimentary production design to the wrongheaded performances. The characters’ motivations are as evanescent as their Irish dialects.

In the opening scenes, the seamstresses tinker so ineffectually over their piecework that it’s little wonder their boss orders them to get their collective bottoms in gear. Biseti and her halting cast fail to give McGuinness’ half-baked rhetoric any continuity or flow. The female agitators in “Factory Girls” are agitating to be sure--just not in the intended sense.

--F.K.F.

* “Factory Girls,” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 5. $20. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours.