It’s High Noon in ‘Cheyenne’

Don’t ask why “Cheyenne: A Transwestern” at the Lillian Theater works as well as it does. In her “transwestern,” playwright Liz Tuccillo inverts the macho formula of the vintage Hollywood oater, making the swaggering gunslingers female and the pouting saloon vamps male.

If that sounds like a silly high concept that could wear thin in about two minutes--it is, but it doesn’t. There’s synergy at work here. Tuccillo and director Craig Carlisle have collaborated before, on the off-Broadway run of “Joe Fearless.” The ease of association is evident in this production, a cheerful gender-bending shoot- ‘em-up that is flat-out funny from start to finish.

Tuccillo’s intentionally generic plot is as slim as a snake on short rations. A true-blue Sheriff (Susan Ziegler) and her trusty sisters Josephine (Valerie Long) and Alex (Michele Remsen) must defend Cheyenne from an evil gang of desperadoes. The evil gunmen--uh, gunpeople--are Colvita (Gretel Roenfeldt), Bonita (Amy Scribner) and Mulita (Amy Smallman), also sisters nursing an old grudge, and vice versa.

The pending showdown has the town’s nervous Nellie menfolk, Billy Jo (Paul Bartholomew), Claude (Erik Passoja) and Ronald (Jim Hanna), fretting that their significant others will return from the showdown with ventilated intestines.

Just when you thought the good gal sisters were hopelessly outnumbered, a Mysterious Stranger (Rita Kane) helps even the odds.

Carlisle renders this western velvet painting with broadly comic strokes, and his able actors attack their material with inspired stupidity, not to mention crack timing.

Musical director Steve Altman heads a lively combo, and singer-guitarist Phillip Rogers contributes some appropriately inane solos.

F. Kathleen Foley

“Cheyenne: A Transwestern,” Lillian Theater, 1076 Lillian Way, Hollywood. Wednesdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. through Jan. 20, then for last week of run, Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m. Ends Jan. 26. $15. (310) 281-4775. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

The View Is Different From the ‘Mountain’

Jude Narita’s powerful one-woman show “Walk the Mountain,” at Highways Performance Space, is an antidote for the commercialism of “Miss Saigon” and a cautionary tale of warfare American-style.

On Jerry Browning’s stark set, wooden grates are suspended around a central screen on which slides of quotes and photos of real Vietnamese people are flashed. Narita opens with a creation legend, telling of how the mountain spirit and the dragon lord begat offspring that became the Vietnamese. Narita tells of warrior women who led armies against the Chinese and the French.

Contemporary female heroes are also portrayed.

A female doctor who performed operations without anesthesia (“no-pain medicine”) during the “American War” witnesses what may be latent effects of Agent Orange in the grossly deformed babies she delivers. A mother prays for her dead sons. A rebel leader remembers her days in a tiger cage. A young woman recalls turning away from her family to survive.

Director Darling Narita (Jude’s daughter) could tighten up the pacing at the beginning, but overall she gives the material the gravity it requires.

Jude Narita’s show points out how these people were oppressed by the Chinese, the French, the Japanese and the Americans. By putting faces on the enemy, Narita challenges concepts of Vietnam and the war Americans fought there.

Jana J. Monji

“Walk the Mountain,” Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. Today and Saturday, 8:30 p.m. Ends Saturday. $15. (310) 315-1459. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.