Bluesmen’s Battle Plays Out in Shallow ‘Ragged Time’

Playwright Oliver Mayer straddles the gap between expressionism and sentimentality in “Ragged Time,” his world-premiere play at the Black Dahlia Theatre.

The stretch results in a bruising tumble for Mayer, perhaps best known for “Blade to the Heat,” a drama loosely based on a famous and deadly boxing match. Although “Blade” took a critical drubbing in certain quarters for its hyperbole and shaky structure, it was lauded as a directorial tour de force for George C. Wolfe, who helmed the New York production, and for the late Ron Link, whose 1995 staging at the Mark Taper Forum was widely acclaimed.

If Matt Shakman, who has shown his directorial mettle in past Black Dahlia productions, including the long-running “Orson’s Shadow,” hopes to pull off a similar feat in “Ragged Time,” he largely succeeds. Shakman’s exuberant staging plumbs the shallows of Mayer’s ragged “Time” to consistently entertaining effect. However, that adage about the silk purse comes inexorably to mind.

The action is set in 1898, in “A Deep South of the Mind” (why Mayer doesn’t cop to the fact that his setting is actually Charleston, S.C., remains anyone’s guess). The story concerns the battle between Blind Ross and Blind Gary (Jeris Lee Poindexter and L. Kenneth Richardson, respectively), itinerant black blues musicians who are vying for the services of a Mexican orphan (Tina Sanchez) to act as their “lead boy,” a sort of seeing-eye human. The fact that Ignacio is a talented musician who could pass along their musical legacy makes their rivalry all the more bitter. Meanwhile, Abe (Tony Abatemarco), a scrappy Jewish paperboy just passing through on his way to war in Cuba, falls in love with Freda (Chane’t Johnson), a whore of color trying to pass for white. A requisite redneck (George Gerdes) adds trumped-up menace, while the Yellow Kid (Steven Klein) and the Buster Brownish Sanctimonious Kid (Jennifer Morrison), comic-book characters come to life, also prance through the action to arcane effect.

Led by the authoritative Abatemarco, a top-notch cast shores up the thematically shaky proceedings, but their praiseworthy efforts cannot conceal the crumbling surface beneath.

F. Kathleen Foley

“Ragged Time,” Black Dahlia Theatre, 5453 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Nov. 3. $18. (323) 856-4200. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

*

‘Death Row’ Takes

Hard-to-Follow Path

Like many others during the Depression, they were just trying to hitch a free train ride. They paid dearly for it.

After an on-board fight between a handful of black and white youths, nine of the blacks, ages 13 to 19, were rounded up for arrest. A pair of white women then emerged to claim that the black youths had raped them. Guilt was swiftly declared and the death penalty imposed. So began the legal odyssey that would forever lump the youths together as the Scottsboro Boys.

The Scottsboro case remains instructive on many levels. But confusion threatens to overwhelm the lessons in “Direct From Death Row: The Scottsboro Boys,” written by Mark Stein, with songs by Harley White Jr., at the Fountain Theatre.

The show is presented vaudeville-style as it looks back at events that began on March 25, 1931, near Scottsboro, Ala., and stretched over the next 17 years. The Scottsboro Boys materialize on a scuffed but gaily decorated stage (designed by Thomas A. Brown), looking battered and wary. The longest-jailed--the cocky, resilient Haywood Patterson (Edwin Morrow)--quickly emerges as the lead storyteller. His compatriots are played by a mix of male and female actors who assume multiple roles.

To portray white accusers and defenders, the performers don commedia dell’arte-style masks. One such figure is the youths’ chief accuser, Victoria Price (Bernadette L. Speakes), who sings a sexy blues number and slinks around the stage even as she tries to present herself as a paragon of Southern virtue. Coming to the defendants’ aid, Joe Brodsky (Gilbert Glenn Brown) of the American Communist Party does a magic act to demonstrate what he can do for them.

These moments lend a wry bit fun to what is otherwise a bleak tale of racism and opportunism.

Under Ben Bradley’s direction, the proceedings are always interesting to look at, and the characterizations--by a cast that also includes Erinn Anova, Sheilagh M. Brooks, Yaphet Enge, Andre Jackson, Don Richardson, Timothy Lopez Rogers and piano player Tim Davis--are always sharp.

But with so many characters trying to describe what happened, sometimes out of sequence, the story is difficult to follow.

Daryl H. Miller

“Direct From Death Row: The Scottsboro Boys,” Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Nov. 10. $25. (323) 663-1525. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

*

Changing Mores on View

in a Spanish Classic

Along with his predecessor, Lope de Vega, 17th century Spanish playwright Pedro Calderon de la Barca is widely considered a lion of the golden age of Spanish drama. When he was ordained a priest later in life, Calderon confined his output to sacramental plays, but not before he had contributed some classic works to the theatrical canon.

A dizzying blend of commedia and tragedy, “The Mayor of Zalamea” (El Alcalde de Zalamea), is one such classic, now being performed in Spanish and English on alternate weekends at the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts. Director Margarita Galban, who also adapted the work with Lina Montalvo, with English translation by Margarita Lamas, starts off the production on an antic note, with plenty of live folk music and comic buffoonery. Initially broad to a fault, the production deepens and evolves as the plot segues into the serious.

Upon entering the theater, the audience is greeted by street vendors, who cheerfully ply their wares along the main street of Estela Scarlata’s village set. When a troop of soldiers, led by an imperious Captain (Daniel Light), march into town, the villagers scatter--with good reason. Battle-hardened louts, the soldiers are as apt to pillage their own countrymen as they are the enemy. The Captain, a Spanish noble who views commoners as less than human, develops an obsessive yen for the beautiful Isabel (Veronica Stocker), daughter of wealthy local farmer Pedro Crespo (Ernesto Miyares), the town’s most influential citizen and soon to become its mayor. Isabel’s subsequent rape and its aftermath are portrayed with brutal veracity in Galban’s flawed but passionate staging.

Modern audiences may find it hard to accept Isabel’s utter ruin for her “crime,” but her plight still stirs our sympathy and our outrage, as does her father’s valiant attempt to avenge her. A few over-the-top performances could use some muting, but this is a rare opportunity to see a venerable play that still has the power to beguile us--both as drama and as a barometer of changing social mores.

F. Kathleen Foley

*

“The Mayor of Zalamea,” Bilingual Foundation of the Arts, 421 North Avenue 19, Los Angeles. Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 4 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Nov. 3. Alternating weekly in Spanish and English. $22-$25. (323) 225-4044. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

*

Sleek ‘Ivona’ Proves More of a Curiosity

Incongruous elegance clashes with textual excess in Witold Gombrowicz’s 1935 allegory “Ivona, Princess of Burgundia,” opening Cal Rep’s 2002-03 season in Long Beach.

Generally revered in Poland, Gombrowicz was a bisexual iconoclast with blood ties to Rabelais. His outsized anarchistic style has an egalitarian attitude regarding class distinctions and institutional hypocrisy.

Gombrowicz’s debut play, “Ivona” concerns a perversely bored prince (Rory Cowan), who chooses a deformed commoner (Tannis Hanson) as his bride. His parents (Craig Fleming and Lauren Thompson) and courtiers think it a tasteless joke--the neurasthenic Ivona cannot even curtsy.

But when the populace hails the betrothal, the monarchs and their amoral bishop (Marjorie Gaines) frantically regroup. Prince Philip’s cooling interest leads to multiple assassination plots, with Ivona finally finished off by a fishbone.

Danila Korogodsky’s Cubist arena set takes Christopher Kittrell’s rich lighting beautifully. Vicki Lindstrom’s Edwardian costumes are lovely, and Barbara Matthews provides aerodynamic wigs worthy of “Hairspray.”

Somehow this sleek staging makes a vice of restraint. Director Adrian Giurgea harvests scant kinetic excitement or satiric invention, repeatedly missing opportunities for direct address and sexual ambiguity, and the pace is painful.

The ensemble gallantly does what it can. Cowan’s resonant voice and presence are admirable, while Fleming and Thompson suggest Ruritanian editions of George Coe and Angela Lansbury.

Hanson, resembling a bald albino Cynthia Nixon, is elfin rather than grotesque, perhaps Giurgea’s most serious miscalculation. Undoubtedly a curiosity, ultimately “Ivona” is less adventurous than tedious.

David C. Nichols

*

“Ivona, Princess of Burgundia,” Edison Theatre, 213 E. Broadway, Long Beach. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 7 p.m.; Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Oct. 12 and 19, 2 p.m.; Oct. 15, 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 19. $17-$20. (562) 432-1818, (562) 985-7000. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

*

It’s Difficult to Connect

With This ‘Six Degrees’

When it first played Broadway a dozen or so years back, John Guare’s “Six Degrees of Separation” made enough of a splash that is was subsequently made into a film starring Stockard Channing, from the Broadway cast, and big-screen newcomer Will Smith. On the cusp of the 1990s, Guare’s arch drama about affluent New Yorkers duped by a young African American con man struck a psychic chord with audiences, who embraced the play’s intellectual brittleness as somehow emblematic of the times.

Based on real events, the play will always hold a place in popular culture, if only for popularizing the now celebrated concept that all humans can be linked through six or fewer arbitrary pairings of strangers--the basis for a popular parlor game and spirited conjecture about just how many “degrees” separate Louise Brooks from, say, Queen Latifah. But the acid test of time has not been kind to Guare’s cartoonish parable, which now holds our interest primarily as a marginalized period piece, a fading portrait of ‘80s greed.

Recent world events have possibly contributed to the play’s reduction from the profound to the trivial. Yet the current production by the Company Rep at the El Portal’s Circle Theatre is as much the victim of Anthony J. Haney’s tin-eared direction as it is of historical retrospect. When the deceptively preppy Paul (Brandon Ford Green) bursts into the high-rise luxury digs of Flan (Joe Garcia) and Ouisa (Chera Holland), he is supposed to wow the white folks with his deft chatter. But Paul’s initial monologue seems more boring than mesmerizing--a serious flaw. If Paul hopes to insinuate himself into this alien social orbit, he must be a spellbinder from the get-go--not the case in Green’s tame turn.

Under Haney’s hand, the actors roll out wafer-thin portrayals, precisely rendered but devoid of the subtexts that might have lent weight to the piece.

The sole exception is Holland, who takes full advantage of her opportunities as one of the few sympathetic characters in Guare’s stable of stereotypes--a refreshing respite from the prevalent emotional sterility.

F. Kathleen Foley

*

“Six Degrees of Separation,” Circle Theatre at the El Portal, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Oct. 20. $20-$25. (818) 506-7550. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.