Turning History Into Chilling Drama

Regardless of whether you accept the presumption of innocence in playwright Lou Shaw’s “Worse Than Murder, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg,” at Studio City’s Ventura Court Theatre, the drama’s factual account of the prosecutorial excesses employed against America’s most notorious convicted spies is a chilling caution about the fragility of the civil liberties we take for granted.

In compelling performances as the doomed husband and wife, a perfectly accented Linda Hamilton and Robin Thomas immediately engage our sympathy with the couple’s unshakable love for one another, and their high level of personal integrity. Proclaiming their innocence until their execution, the pair refused every opportunity to obtain leniency through confession, and the romantic spark between the actors rescues what borders on a history lesson steeped in polemics.

Drawing on FBI and other government documents released long after the trial, Shaw makes a compelling case that the pair were systematically framed. Their convictions hinged on the fabricated testimony of Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass (Tom Gibis), who shared none of their compunctions about saving his hide by claiming he delivered atomic secrets to a spy ring headed by Julius Rosenberg.

Shaw tells his story through flashbacks evoked during an inquiry by the Rosenbergs’ adult children (Murray Rubinstein and Dennis Gersten) into the fate of the parents they barely remember. Under Tom Bissinger’s workmanlike staging, it proves a serviceable device for presenting information, and even allows for some speculative, surreal exchanges with the effectively sinister figure of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Dennis Cockrum), the blatantly corrupt trial judge (William Knight) and the less successful, smarmy young prosecutor Roy Cohn (Judd Trichter).

By focusing on individual villainy, this treatment somewhat obscures the broader forces at work--the rampant Red Scare paranoia that demanded a scapegoat for the Soviet Union’s development of nuclear weapons. It was necessary that someone take the blame, and the Rosenbergs’ leftist affiliations and Jewish otherness made them such perfect targets that the issue of their actual guilt was chillingly irrelevant. The unindicted co-conspirators of the piece are the sullen ignorance of herd mentality, a threat in any era.

Philip Brandes

“Worse Than Murder, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg,” Ventura Court Theatre, 12417 Ventura Court, Studio City. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends June 30. $25. (818) 752-8563. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Eloquent Monologues

Link Racism, Dysfunction

The visceral energy of pure performance ignites “Three True One” at the Electric Lodge in Venice. This tripartite program of conjoined monologues largely transcends its workshop origins, with unusually potent results.

Originally developed by writers-performers Bridgid Coulter, Rana Haugen and Eric Cazenave at the Larry Moss Studios, “Three True One” explores links among racism, sexual abuse and family dysfunction, reflected in the mirror of one another’s oblique autobiographical material.

Coulter’s “Bad Luck and Trouble,” Haugen’s “Three Doorways” and Cazenave’s “Runaway” are thus intertwined both intentionally and by default. Following the ritual opening of specific title phrases, each redoubtable performer takes center stage, with the other intensely observant participants interjecting vocal and kinetic effects at key moments.

Through Coulter’s rich humor and formidable characterizations, her recollections of interracial humiliation connect directly with the audience’s solar plexus. The sylph-like Haugen whips through alternately ribald and unsettling abstractions of sexual debris like a gestalt Paul Taylor soloist. Cazenave’s affecting tale of coming of age amid gangs and an authoritarian stepfather caps the proceedings with utter aplomb.

Understanding that the telling of these stories is the whole point, Don Cheadle’s smooth direction involves minimal embellishment and maximum focus.

There is still room for pruning, and occasional vestiges of rehearsal-room ethos are detectable. But such considerations seem inconsequential alongside the insight, wit and eloquence this omnibus consistently displays.

David C. Nichols

“Three True One,” Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Ave., Venice. Fridays- Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m. (no show this Sunday). Ends June 9. $12. (310) 305-1854. Running time: 65 minutes.

‘Perfect Wedding’s’ Sex

Farce Has a Message

Hung over from his stag party, Bill awakes on his wedding morning to find a beautiful stranger sharing his bed. He can’t remember a single detail of their encounter, but whatever happened, he needs to cover it up fast, because his fiancee is due to arrive at any moment.

These first, frantic moments of the sex farce “Perfect Wedding” lead to an ever-expanding web of lies and an Indy 500 of people racing to the nearest door to avoid being seen by one another. But Robin Hawdon’s giddy comedy also contains something not typically associated with the genre: an actual message--and quite an affirming one, at that.

Laughs remain the first order of business, however, and they are delivered aplenty in a Woodland Hills Theatre production at the West Valley Playhouse. Director Jon Berry carefully orchestrates the erupting chaos, assisted by actors who manage to be achingly believable, yet just enough larger than life to propel the action to comic extremes.

Moved from its original setting in England to Santa Barbara, the action unfolds in a honeymoon suite painted a calming powder blue--the only peaceful thing in sight. (Victoria Profitt created the design.)

Rhett Nadolny’s Bill is an earnest, well-meaning guy in his 20s who is jolted awake when he finds Nicole Sciacca’s fiery, intoxicating Judy tangled under the covers with him. Before the situation is properly sorted out, the best man (David L. Corrigan) will be wielding the wedding cake knife with harmful intent; a chambermaid (Rachel Barber) swept into the cover-up will be using a referee’s whistle to try to quiet the bickering wedding party; and the increasingly fed-up bride (the single-named Arianna) and her flustered mother (Nance Crawford) will be struggling to salvage a once-perfect wedding.

Societal pressures are driving several of these characters toward marriage for all the wrong reasons. And therein lies the moral, for only by following their hearts do these folks have any hope of a happy ending.

Daryl H. Miller

“Perfect Wedding,” West Valley Playhouse, 7242 Owensmouth Ave., Canoga Park. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends June 2. $18. (818) 884-1907. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Modern Adam-and-Eve

Parable in ‘Saved’

In the moonlit garden of a pricey ocean-side hotel, a tuxedoed man meets up with an elegantly attired woman. Some sort of history has passed between them, but its nature isn’t immediately clear in “How Shall We Be Saved?” at the Lost Studio.

The woman, a former ‘60s radical, begins to name the shattering secrets of her past, weaving her experiences into an ever more complex rumination on history, politics, social theory, psychology and religion. Articulate and fiercely alive, she proceeds to haul the man on the carpet for his gender’s raping, murderous ways, while he sits blank-faced and nearly mute, incapable of anything but increasingly ineffectual physical responses.

And so it goes as this son of Adam and daughter of Eve grope their way through a sin-tainted world.

The play’s unapologetically political author, Donald Freed, has made a career of hunting out the horror as well as the humanity in an age that seems bent on self-destruction. (His best-known work is the Richard M. Nixon mock-confessional “Secret Honor,” which he co-wrote with Arnold M. Stone.)

Here, he has devised a noirish mystery that turns out to be a parable. Colorfully but densely written, the story is a confusing thicket of hidden meanings.

Fortunately, the wondrous Salome Jens delivers most of the text. Her character lets her thoughts tumble forth for an intermission-less 75 minutes, while the man looks on in bewilderment. Determined to get through to him, she purrs, she teases, she bombards--and, when all he can manage by way of response is an animal roar, she roars back.

Mitchell Ryan vividly fulfills his part of the bargain, finding an amazing array of emotion within his general state of discomfiture.

Carefully modulated under Freed’s direction and enacted amid the inviting verdure of Daniel C. Cowan’s walled garden, this Adam-and-Eve tale makes an earnest effort to turn us all back toward Eden.

D.H.M.

“How Shall We Be Saved?,” the Lost Studio, 130 S. La Brea Ave., L.A. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends June 30. $15. (323) 933-6944. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

A Comedy About Arts

Funding? Well, It Works

Now here’s something you don’t come across every day: a Noel Coward-esque comedy about arts funding. It’s not the likeliest idea around, yet somehow it works in a sharply rendered staging at Theatre 40.

Written while the country was debating the appropriateness of National Endowment for the Arts funding for certain works, Rich Orloff’s “Veronica’s Position” spins a fictional story out of one of the biggest brouhahas of that period: the cancellation of a Robert Mapplethorpe photography exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., at a time when the clamor on Capitol Hill threatened to undermine the NEA.

The action unfolds in a posh D.C. hotel suite in late 1989, as middle-aged, glamour-queen movie actress Veronica Fairchild (Janice Lynde) prepares for her stage debut in a production of “Hedda Gabler.” The much-married star will be performing opposite a former husband (Michael Forest) but has turned her romantic attentions to a U.S. senator (Webster Williams).

While embroiled in artistic differences with the play’s hotshot director (Cheryl Carter), Veronica finds herself in a still more awkward position when a photographer (David Cheaney) being decried by the senator begins spending a lot of time in her suite as a guest of her personal assistant (Kris Frost).

Although there’s never much doubt about which side of the debate the play will end up supporting, Orloff articulately states both positions and gives listeners a lot to think about.

Director Bruce Gray draws out the humor and keeps the action buoyant, while the actors bring sharp detail to each characterization. Lynde, a real-life soap opera personality, is a particular delight as a demanding diva with a heart of gold, while Frost provides the emotional core as an otherwise witty, fun-loving guy who has all but shut down after his lover’s death.

D.H.M.

“Veronica’s Position,” Theatre 40, on the grounds of Beverly Hills High School, 241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends June 9. $15-$18. (310) 364-0535. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.