Misplaced Attitude Mars ‘A Sweet Deal’

If you really want to know what incarceration feels like, try sitting through “A Sweet Deal,” Jacob Sidney’s skillfully constructed but insufferably smarmy monologue about his brief time in the L.A. County jail system.

Sidney proves an articulate writer with a discerning eye for Kafkaesque detail in this factually inspired account of 26-year-old narrator Frank Bigelow’s arrest and no-contest plea, following an unfortunate accident in which he struck a pedestrian with his car. Opening the piece in a perfect “Dragnet” monotone, Sidney presents a deadpan “just-the-facts” reconstruction of the event, wittily embellished with courtroom exhibit-style diagrams and visual aids. Director Michael Rainey continues to punctuate the piece with brief stylish graphics throughout.

Lacking financial resources for a private attorney, Bigelow finds himself at the mercy of a criminal justice system whose every representative he skewers with withering superiority--the dumb cop, the incompetent public defender, the bullying prison guards. Then there are those requisite dregs of humanity, his fellow prisoners, not to mention the unsanitary conditions.

Despite a few stumbles, Sidney’s delivery is crisp and assured, though partly read from manuscript in this Circle X Theatre production. The real problem, though, is attitude. To be sure, he makes the experience sound very unpleasant. But his unrelenting tone of self-righteous pique is equally so, especially when he dubs his tale “The Ballad of L.A. County Gaol.” A few days spent where the food, accommodations and movies were not to his taste is in no way comparable to Oscar Wilde’s hard labor term.

More offensively, not once in the entire chronicle does the narrator display a shred of concern for the hospitalized accident victim, who’s never defined beyond the label “Moron” on an impact diagram. In this incident, the pedestrian may have been at fault, but lack of legal liability does not preclude regret or compassion. There is fodder for a legitimate work here, but it would best be set aside and reconsidered after some intervening time and life experience.

*

“A Sweet Deal,” Theatre/Theater, 6425 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 17. $10. (323) 969-9239, Ext. 2. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.