Eva Peron: theory of a lost year

Did you know that before the prominent political marriage that got her enshrined as an Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical icon, Eva Peron did a stint as a pawn of Argentine Nazis, followed by a political and romantic alliance with Jewish crusaders?

Busy gal -- or so playwright Jorge Albertella asks us to accept as the premise of his speculative historical drama, “Eva Peron and the Fourth Reich,” at Hollywood’s Los Angeles Jewish Theatre. Weaving together isolated snippets of historical fact, the play offers a wild theory about Eva’s mysterious one-year disappearance in 1943, at the height of the acting fame she’d worked so hard to attain.

It was also during this period that many Nazis sought refuge in Argentina. Linking the two circumstances in the play is a present-day inquiry in which a troubled American journalist (Steve Reisberg) interviews an elderly Argentine survivor of that turbulent period (Eve Sigall) -- a familiar framing device enlivened by some energetic sparring between the two (who naturally have hidden personal connections to the story).

In flashbacks, we watch the strikingly untalented but hugely ambitious actress Eva Duarte (June Marie) as she’s manipulated by sinister entrepreneur Fritz Mandl (a smoldering, venomous Andy Brendle).

Mandl, the ex-husband of Hedy Lamarr (they divorced over his Nazi beliefs) offers Eva a career boost and an introduction to a rising politician in exchange for help escorting “European immigrants” into the country.

Eva’s moral conscience is later restored by a sympathetic fellow actress (nice work from Jerri Tubbs) and -- less convincingly -- a fiery Jewish activist (Yuri Lowenthal) whose principal strategy of persuasion is to berate her. Naturally, she falls in love with him.

Though all this is loosely grounded in real-life characters and events, the effort to tie them together into a coherent story is so labored and exposition-heavy that the intermittent moments of gripping human drama seem more like afterthoughts than the play’s emotional core.

-- Philip Brandes

“Eva Peron and the Fourth Reich,” Los Angeles Jewish Theatre, 1528 N. Gordon St., Hollywood. Thursdays, Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 14. $20. (310) 967-1352 or (323) 466-0179. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

*

A lot of talking at a seaside bar

A heavy seas advisory is broadcast over a radio in a coastal bar, prompting one of the regulars, already well on his way to oblivion, to observe that the watering hole is like a safe harbor -- “a place of refuge for vulnerable human vessels.”

There’s a whiff of Tennessee Williams’ earlier poetry in that phrase, but too little else in the 1972 play “Small Craft Warnings” rises above the pedestrian. An ambitious but uneven production by a coalition of New Orleans and Los Angeles theater artists -- presented in the large lobby/rumpus room at the Evidence Room -- fails to make a case for pulling this curiosity off of the library shelf and putting it onstage.

The play was expanded from a shorter piece called “Confessional,” a title that’s more to the point, since much of the text is presented in revelatory monologues. That’s an awfully static way to deliver information and, try as it might, the current presentation, directed by Stacey Arton, can’t transcend the structural limitations.

The most talkative of the Southern California bar’s regulars is Leona (Maggie Eldred), a beautician who wishes she could beautify her disappointing life. At once self-aware and self-deluding, she seeks comfort in the oversexed Bill (Randy Irwin), who in turn cozies up to the fragile Violet (Wendy Johnson). Violet’s sort-of boyfriend, Steve (John Fleck), reels drunkenly between her and the bar, where the establishment’s quiet owner, Monk (Don Oscar Smith), serves drink after drink to Doc (Doug Barden), a physician who has lost his license.

Two more customers wander in by chance: Quentin (Travis Michael Holder), a middle-aged screenwriter who has picked up Bobby (Jerry Turner), a youth fresh out of Iowa. By this point in his career, Williams was becoming increasingly open about homosexuality, and in these characters he depicts two generations of gay men: from the pre-liberation era of furtiveness and from the then-newly emergent age of openness.

Holder and Turner deliver their monologues -- the script’s most poetic and insightful passages -- with grace, while Johnson conveys Violet’s frayed dignity with beautiful understatement. The normally wonderful Fleck, however, turns in a frenetic performance that misguidedly attempts to pump some levity into the proceedings.

In “Small Craft Warnings,” it is particularly easy to see facets of Williams’ personality divided among the characters. But this crowd is so pathetic that perhaps we don’t want to look too closely.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“Small Craft Warnings,” the Evidence Room, 2220 Beverly Blvd., L.A. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 7. $20. (213) 381-7118. Running time: 2 hours.

*

A poignant look at the elderly

The ongoing perils facing America’s elderly underlie “Whatever Your Heart Desires,” now premiering at the Fremont Centre Theatre. Christine Rosensteel-Savalla’s cautionary parable about two Hollywood geriatrics and the grifters who exploit them juggles character comedy and social commentary with fascinating, albeit flawed, results.

Near-senile Daniel (King Stuart) and doting wife Issy (Pat Crawford Brown) are first seen debating lightbulb maintenance. Candy (Antonia Jones) and Harley (Lancer Dean Shull) are West Virginia scammers seeking instant Tinseltown fortune. Harley’s awakening conscience complicates Candy’s naive agenda, with Harley’s hostile sibling, Keith (John Newman), bringing about a tragic conclusion.

The designs are sharp, with Gary Wissmann’s Wilcox Ave. set and Shaun Drew’s original music excellent, and both couples are superb. Stuart’s portrait of diminished faculties shreds the heart, while Brown is, as ever, an exemplary character actress. Shull is an absolute find, supreme at the climax, and the fetching Jones finds ambiguities beyond the script’s limitations.

Rosensteel-Savalla’s premise is potent, but her TV-movie architecture requires corrective surgery. Candy’s plan is revealed immediately in over-explicated dialogue (a recurring drawback), rather than emerging from the rising action, and the outside scenes are almost wholly unnecessary for the information conveyed.

Keith is an unsubstantiated device, and Newman’s surface portrayal hardly counters this. Moreover, the cuddly epilogue must go: This play’s proper curtain is the previous image of transformed slacker helping fragile senior upstairs.

Lewis Hauser’s direction also varies, his pace hobbled by the constant scene breaks, which are risible when, repeatedly, a supposedly unconscious character exits in blue-lighted view.

The core notion and central quartet should be seen, though, and subject-sensitive audiences may well forgive this unkempt but worthy effort its structural deficiencies.

-- David C. Nichols

“Whatever Your Heart Desires,”

Fremont Centre Theatre, 1000 Fremont Ave., South Pasadena. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Also, Thursday and Aug. 28 only, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 31. $16-$18. (626) 398-9790. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

*

Two women search for self

The road to selfhood is an individual one, but common signposts appear along everybody’s path. Some interesting ones are mapped in “Miles From Myself,” a double bill of solo shows at the National Comedy Theatre.

Janice Bremec opens the presentation with “26.2: Single Twin Running,” in which marathon running provides a richly symbolic context. Running in place, the peppy, expressive Bremec re-creates the thoughts that race through her mind while participating in the New York City Marathon. One notion that keeps popping up is “I don’t think I can do this without Jayne,” the identical twin sister who stands along the route to offer support.

This becomes the catalyst for memories about their lives together, in which the more practical Jayne is forever bailing her out.

“There’s no doubt about it, I am the bad twin,” Janice jokes.

Then Jayne falls in love and Janice feels abandoned. “Now I’m just half of a set that made me whole,” she says. “I am pepper.” To wean herself of this dependence, she moves to Los Angeles and begins to run a different marathon.

In the flawed but involving “Self-Portrait: Girl in Argentine Landscape,” Naomi Grossman takes visitors on a tour through the picture gallery in her mind -- a concept she overextends while also getting mired in matters of taste and pacing.

Feeling trapped and overextended as an overachieving high-schooler in Taos, N.M., Grossman decides to study abroad. This takes her to Argentina, where she invents an exotic alter ego to propel her through her exciting new world. The dynamic contrasts between Grossman’s old and new lives help to put her on the road to self-awareness. “These people made me feel so at home,” she says. “At home, I felt so foreign.”

Richard Embardo artfully directed both pieces, which share a theme of venturing away from the familiar on the way to finding oneself.

-- D.H.M.

“Miles From Myself,” National Comedy Theatre, 733 N. Seward St., L.A. Mondays-Tuesdays, 8 p.m. Ends Sept. 2. $12. (323) 930-1804. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.