Going Happily Over the Top in Old-Time Hollywood

OK, so you’re an aspiring actor, fresh out of Podunk, and you’ve just gotten your first break in motion pictures. There’s one problem: You’re sharing your “role” with 3,399 other hopefuls, and you’re filming on location in the Arizona desert, 240 miles from anywhere. Worse, your older brother is not only spending time with the girl you love, he’s rocketing to stardom, while you’re left wallowing in the sand, enduring the Ten Plagues of Egypt. (Did we mention you hate frogs?)

Such is the plight of Benny, the fresh-faced naif at the center of the high jinks in “Epic Proportions,” Larry Coen and David Crane’s 1930s period comedy, now at West Coast Ensemble. A sendup of Hollywood in its heyday, “Proportions” is a slight but glittering bagatelle, polished to a high gloss by director Richard Israel and his energetic cast.

The material may be featherweight, but Coen and Crane (Crane co-created the hit TV series “Friends”) know their way around a one-liner and leave no surrealistically sensational opportunity unexploited. The movie-within-a-play, directed by the legendary D.W. DeWitt (an effectively deadpan Larry Lederman), is a kitchen-sink epic so huge, it makes “Intolerance” look like a nickelodeon short. Casting history to the desert wind, DeWitt lumps Cleopatra, Moses, et al into one improbable sex-and-sand story line. The stuff of catharsis “Proportions” is not, but it is sufficient pretext for the cheerfully hammy actors to romp freely in the tall corn.

The action cuts back and forth between the actual film shoot and the romantic byplay off camera among sweetly woebegone Benny (Michael Spellman); Phil (Paul Kouri), Benny’s handsome but insensitive older brother; and Louise (hilarious Madelynn Fattibene), the wholesome production assistant they both adore. Mark Ehrlich, John Steven Rocha and Ed Smaron are versatile backups, playing everything from pharaohs to spear-bearers. Over-the-top Angela DeCicco amuses as a gum-popping Cleopatra hot on the comeback trail. Evan Bartoletti designed the set, Lisa D. Katz the lighting and David Spector the sound, which includes an unctuous baritone voice-over a la “The Ten Commandments.” Costume designer Gina Davison’s gleefully gaudy Egyptian togs go light on historical authenticity and heavy on the glitter--standard operating procedure for this lighthearted diversion.

F. Kathleen Foley

“Epic Proportions,” West Coast Ensemble, 522 N. La Brea Ave., L.A. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends July 28. $20. (323) 525-0022. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

‘Cherry Orchard’ Tries to

Honor Chekhov’s Wish

From the beginning, there has been disagreement over how to stage Chekhov’s plays. The playwright’s great patron, Konstantin Stanislavsky, directed them as dramas at the Moscow Art Theater, while Chekhov insisted they were comedies.

An Odyssey Theatre Ensemble/Circus Theatricals production of “The Cherry Orchard” tries to honor Chekhov’s wish. But comedy, as Chekhov wrote it, exists on a knife’s edge between satiric silliness and immense sadness. Director Jack Stehlin and his cast blunder too often into broad comedy, which makes the characters seem merely ridiculous and their downfall pathetic rather than sorrowful.

The cast’s two biggest names, Alfred Molina and Stephanie Zimbalist, deliver the most effective performances.

Molina is earnest but a bit arrogant as a successful businessman in early 1900s Russia who tries to divert a once-wealthy family--whose predecessors owned his father as a serf--from the calamity of seeing its country estate sold at auction to settle debts.

Playing the estate owner’s adopted daughter and the property’s caretaker, Zimbalist--tightly buttoned into her severely drab dresses--is the picture of repressed emotion.

As the estate owner, Jill Gascoine is so filled with the joy of living that it’s almost easy to forgive her disastrous lack of practicality, while Greg Mullavey, playing her brother, is an overgrown child, veering between extremes of rapture and despair.

Mullavey is encouraged to play much too big at times, while actors in some of the smaller roles are sent still further--especially Gigi Bermingham (so excellent in the recent “Non-Vital Organs”) as a governess whose attention-grabbing theatrics and shrill voice put one in mind of Megan Mullally’s Karen on “Will & Grace.”

“The Cherry Orchard” is a story about something important slipping through one’s fingers, vanishing irretrievably into the past before it is even really gone. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happens to this production.

Daryl H. Miller

“The Cherry Orchard,” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; June 23 and July 21, 2 p.m. Ends July 28. $19.50-$25. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

Offbeat but Predictable

‘Criminal Minds’

A trio of criminals holes up in an off-season Florida miniature golf facility in “Criminal Minds,” an entertaining but insubstantial play that holds our interest right up until it devolves into predictable crisis.

The play, the second production for the Company Rep at the El Portal’s Circle Theatre, opens shortly after Eddie Ray (Rob Arbogast) has broken out of the pen along with fellow con Renfroe (Ron Slanina). An opportunistic scumbag who spells trouble in capital letters, Eddie Ray has coerced his long-suffering, trashy girlfriend Billy Marie (Heather Simmons) into aiding and abetting his latest harebrained scheme. That scheme revolves around the fact that Renfroe, a courtly soul with a mysterious past, has absolutely no memory, either short- or long-term--a quirk that makes him the perfect patsy for Eddie Ray’s next heist. However, Renfroe soon concocts a passionate attraction for the tough-as-nails Billy Marie, who finds herself softening under Renfroe’s gentle influence.

An early effort by Robin Swicord, now an A-list screenwriter whose credits include “Practical Magic” and “Little Women,” the play is offbeat to the point of affectation, ending with an O. Henry twist more mean-spirited than shocking. The play’s faults are lessened by Hope Alexander’s energetic direction, and compelling performances by Simmons and Slanina, whose rich, psychologically true turns are triumphs of style over substance. Arbogast is less successful as Eddie Ray, who is manic to a fault and less than menacing. Jackson DeGovia’s well-crafted set--a miniature golf course, complete with a huge, made-from-scratch brontosaurus--is particularly striking.

F.K.F.

“Criminal Minds,” Circle Theatre at the El Portal, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends June 30. $20-$25. (818) 509-8823. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.