He’s Made His ‘Beds,’ Now Must Lie in Them

How the mighty have stumbled. Leon Katz, professor emeritus at Yale and visiting professor at UCLA, is a veteran teacher and playwright whose works have been produced worldwide. Yet in “Beds,” three new solo one-acts at the Stella Adler, Katz descends from the profound to the ludicrous.

The first two plays are thoughtful and poignant, worthy outpourings of a distinguished practitioner. The third is a travesty, so benumbingly awful that it seems specifically designed to exasperate. In that, if nothing else, it richly succeeds.

The opening play, “Nurturing Alice,” features Irene Roseen as the elderly Alice B. Toklas, who, from the confines of her deathbed, reflects back on her life with her beloved “Baby,” Gertrude Stein. Also set in a deathbed, the second play, “Dear Bosie,” shows the final moments of Oscar Wilde (Travis Michael Holder), as he recalls past glories and humiliations, particularly his ruinous affair with his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Katz and his co-director, Debra De Liso, elicit deft and heartfelt performances from Roseen and Holder, who lend spiritual ballast to the determinedly fleshly musings of their characters.

But Katz’s intellectual preoccupation with fleshliness degenerates into one long dirty joke in “The Wedding Night,” based on a bizarre incident in the life of Oskar Kokoschka, whose obsession for his former lover Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav, prompted him to have a lifelike doll built in her image. In Katz’s incarnation, Kokoschka (Jeremy Lawrence) excitedly awaits the unveiling of his anatomically correct plaything, which he proceeds to savage and sexually molest for a long and painful interval.

Lawrence, an actor of proven skills and established reputation, strips himself bare, both literally and metaphorically, in his conscientious efforts to legitimize Katz’s feverishly bad play. Lawrence reposes a terrible trust in Katz’s misguided vision, and it is he who must suffer the resulting indignity at first-hand.

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* “Beds,” Stella Adler Theatre, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; May 21 and 28, 2 p.m. Ends May 28. $20. (310) 289-2999. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.