‘Big Knife’ Cuts but Doesn’t Shock

The pace could be snappier, but Your Own Sky Theatre Ensemble presents a stylish production of Clifford Odets’ Hollywood morality play, “The Big Knife,” at the Hollywood Court Theater. This tale of the old studio system is filled with gorgeous dames, a sexy movie star with a taste for booze and adultery among friends, a shady studio assistant and a studio head who wallows in the mud of ruined reputations.

Sandy Ampon’s costume design, Susan Gratch’s detailed set and Lynda Dickens hairstyles whisk us back to 1949, when Charlie Castle (Jeff Denton), a stage actor, is now big box office. A certain incident on a drunken evening has left him “owned” by the studio head, Marcus (Robert Costanzo). His wife, Marion (Stefani Newman), has left in disgust.

Odets’ saga about one man’s battle to regain his integrity has a lurid, melodramatic leaning that directors Anthony Lee and Kate Randolph keep reined in. The first act drags, but the actors ignite in the second act, sustaining this energy into the third.

Denton’s Charlie begins as a slightly slimy foil for events, but he gains a sliver of integrity with the predictable tragic ending. Costanzo is impressively larger than life as the coarse, money-grubbing Marcus.

Elaine Cubas is properly sleazy as the wife of the man who took the fall for Charlie, Timothy Ring’s sad-sack Buddy. As the woman who threatens them all, Sarah Schultz’s Dixie is both winsome and believably dim. Lori Lematta’s gossip columnist has the pushy persuasiveness but not the venomous bite of a woman making waves in a man’s world. All stand in contrast to Newman’s world-weary Marion--the woman to be saved from this moral morass.

Some of the shock appeal has been lost since 1949, when this play was written. The mention of abortion and sloshy, boozy bed-hopping don’t pack the same wallop in a post-sexual revolution, Roe-vs.-Wade, Heidi-Fleiss Hollywood.

* “The Big Knife,” Hollywood Court Theater at the United Methodist Church, 6817 Franklin Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays 2 p.m. Ends July 16. $15. (310) 557-9323. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.

‘Mermaid’ Makes a Wrong Big Splash

Amantha May’s “The Mermaid” at the Beverlywood Swim School flounders about, and all the chlorine fumes can’t resuscitate this play, which is soggy with pretension and dripping with unmet promises.

The recent Mark Taper Forum poolside outing, “Metamorphoses,” indicated that water and wading can be good wet fun, even outside of the splash zone. Yet this production on a stage perched over the middle of one pool only uses the water as brief and unnecessary punctuations to a lackluster script about a water-obsessed giantess, Maggie (Stephen Ferguson), and her relationships with her stepmother, Helen (Keri-Anne Telford), and her deceased father (Seth Holder).

Maggie gets depressed. Splash. Maggie accidentally murders Helen. Splash. Maggie’s father didn’t love her. Splash. As executed by Ferguson under Lisa Teichner’s direction, these entries into H2O are artlessly awkward. If nothing else, the sloppy dive techniques and swimming only point out how ungraceful Ferguson’s Maggie--supposedly a freakishly large showgirl, really is.

Unfortunately for the audience, drowning is not an option, and despite the porpoise sound effects,Flipper doesn’t come to the rescue.

* “The Mermaid,” Beverlywood Swim School, 2612 S. Robertson Blvd. Fridays-Saturdays, 8:30 p.m. Ends July 15. $15. (818) 908-8941. Running time: 1 hour.