Play about dreams not a dream play

Anyone who was entranced by Robert Lepage’s “the far side of the moon” at UCLA last year is probably looking forward to “Jimmy,” a production by Lepage’s associate Marie Brassard, in the same Freud Playhouse, presented by UCLA Live.

Prepare for a disappointment.

“Jimmy” is a solo show, like “the far side of the moon.” But Lepage’s production had enough visual effects to fill the wide stage of the Freud several times over, while “Jimmy” occupies only a tiny fraction of the stage.

In fact, part of the problem with “Jimmy” is its venue. The production looks stranded on such a big stage, and the fact that it occupies such a small part of the audience’s field of vision diminishes its ability to hold the audience’s attention. Why wasn’t it booked into the smaller theater next door?

The effects in “Jimmy” are more aural than visual. Brassard plays a dream figure who changes genders and ages, depending on whatever dream she’s in at any given moment. The sound, designed by Michel F. Cote, electronically transports Brassard’s voice from a man’s to a young child’s to a middle-aged mother’s with nary a glitch (except for one “technical problem” that’s actually written into the script and allows us to briefly hear what is presumably Brassard’s authentic voice for the first and only time in the show).

The performance begins with Brassard’s bare back to the audience, creating an image reminiscent of a classic painting of a nude woman. But the cries we hear and the voice that begins speaking, as the figure begins moving, are those of a man. It’s Jimmy, a gay hairdresser who was born as a figure in an American general’s dream in 1950. As Jimmy dresses, he begins to look like a man.

He tells us that he was having a wonderful time in the dream, consorting with his favorite male client, Mitchell -- with the dreaming general watching.

He was just about to kiss Mitchell when the dream ended, leaving Jimmy in a limbo between dreams for five decades, perched on the edge of a kiss.

Now, however, an actress in Montreal (a description that fits Brassard) has summoned him into her own dream, and he must go through several permutations of this woman’s dream imagery, when all he really wants is to resume his dream with Mitchell.

The show’s wispy premise is made even wispier by the staging. Without any attempt by Brassard to visualize the permutations other than through costume and lighting changes, with Brassard clinging to her little platform instead of roaming the expanses of the stage, “Jimmy” is a severely stripped-down dream, lacking the free-flowing sense of changing landscapes that characterize most dreams -- and that characterized “the far side of the moon.” There isn’t much of a music background, except for a couple of moments in which Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” plays while Jimmy dances.

In her monologue, Brassard mentions dreams that are so compelling that the dreamer resents being awakened and eagerly tries to return to them upon falling asleep again. Her show is not one of them.

*

‘Jimmy’

Where: Freud Playhouse, 405 Hilgard Ave., Westwood

When: Today-Saturday, 8 p.m.

Ends: Saturday

Price: $35

Contact: (310) 825-2101

Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes