Wit and emotion compete with flaws in ‘Yellow Flesh’

There’s no buildup to the explicit in the world premiere of Erik Patterson’s “Yellow Flesh/Alabaster Rose” at Theatre of NOTE. Within the play’s first moments, we are hit with a graphic sex scene.

Such encounters are frequent and in your face (and in this small theater, that’s meant literally.) But before you cast Patterson’s play onto the refuse heap of self-consciously fleshly dramas, be aware that it packs a considerable emotional wallop, not to mention a hefty quotient of mordant wit.

You wouldn’t normally associate a story about the pathological consequences of incest with humor of any kind. However, director Miguel Montalvo’s deliberately staccato style dovetails so well with Patterson’s fast-paced, quasi-absurdist dialogue that bursts of appalled laughter frequently result.

Naturally, Patterson’s chief order of business is not getting laughs, but exploring the devastating effects of paternal incest on three siblings -- sex addict Elliot (Christopher Neiman), professional lap dancer Becky (Jennifer Ann Evans) and the sweetly insane Little B (Alina Phelan). Pregnant (we suspect with her father’s child), Becky left home at an early age and is now a single mother to the rebellious Rose (dryly funny Rachel Kann). Elliot has become omnivorously promiscuous, while the deranged Little B, who believes that she is the singer Bjork, retreats into music-fueled reveries to blunt her traumatic memories.

Myriad plot twists include Rose’s pregnancy, Becky’s lesbian romance with a fledgling prostitute (McKerrin Kelly) and Elliot’s numbing dalliances with male hustlers (Ezra Buzzington and Richard Werner).

It’s all raw, gripping and unabashedly messy. It is ironic, then, that the play’s chief problem lies in Patterson’s attempts to impose a rough symmetry on its fluctuating rhythms. Equal weight is given to too many characters, even those introduced late in the play. Also, Patterson seems intent upon making everyone in the play uniformly sympathetic, whether they warrant such treatment or not.

While we initially accept Mom (Sarah Lilly) as a helpless victim of her monstrous husband, we lose patience when she insinuates that she knew about her children’s sexual abuse all along. That suggestion, along with a bizarre subplot in which Mom attempts to seduce her husband’s doctor (Scott McKinley), seems patently absurd, a meaningless detour into puerility that tries all logic and patience.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Yellow Flesh/Alabaster Rose,” Theatre of NOTE, 1517 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends March 29. $15. (323) 856-8611. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Literate humor for fans of the Bard

“Who will believe my verse in time to come?” This query underscores the West Coast premiere of “Naked Will: The Portrait of W.H.” at the Celebration Theatre. Blair Fell’s 1999 reverie examines the debated sexuality of William Shakespeare’s muse with high, albeit specialized, style and substance.

An expository colloquy between Oscar Wilde (Hutchins Foster) and George Wystan Erskine (Michael Oosterom) gets things rolling. Erskine recounts how doomed Cyril Graham (Adam Huss) determined that Shakespeare (Joshua Gordon) really loved an Elizabethan urchin (Huss) destined for comparison to a summer’s day .

This propels Wilde into a Tom Stoppard-flavored fantasia involving the Bard, the boy, Christopher Marlowe (Noah Wagner), Richard Burbage (Oosterom) and the enigmatic “dark lady” (Josie DiVincenzo). By the ending, Wilde has uncovered more than he bargained for, with disgrace looming overhead.

All participants permit the textual idiosyncrasies to work in their favor. Director Derek Charles Livingston has invaluable assets in designers Keith Ellis Mitchell (set), Kathi O’Donohue (lighting) and Shon LeBlanc (costumes), and his excellent cast.

Foster’s Graham Norton quality initially distracts, but his flawless technique ultimately triumphs. Oosterom, Gordon and Wagner are three shades of expert, while DiVincenzo and Huss are revelations, almost stealing the proceedings.

Fell hardly submerges his research, and his compact architecture nearly implodes on its content and agenda; a two-act structure seems advisable.

Still, the literate wit on tap easily recommends “Naked Will,” and the venue can likely anticipate audiences of “Pinafore!” proportions.

-- David C. Nichols

“Naked Will: The Portrait of W.H.,” Celebration Theatre, 7051B Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends March 22. Mature audiences. $15-$20. (323) 957-1884. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

A tense mix of the personal, political

The atrocities of a Central American civil war make a perfect backdrop for a plunge into moral free fall, which is exactly where a team of journalists finds itself in P.D. Productions’ gripping revival of Rafael Lima’s “El Salvador.”

Written in 1988, when that troubled country commanded more prominent headlines, Lima’s tense drama still proves an excellent ensemble vehicle thanks to its collection of diverse, economically sketched characters thrown together in a dangerous setting.

Huddled in a dilapidated hotel room as random violence erupts in the streets below, the members of a news crew succumb to their deepest psychological demons.

Although all of the actors acquit themselves credibly in this collective staging, the most compelling performances are the characters torn by conflicting impulses -- the grizzled veteran photographer Fuller (Eddie Nickerson), who alternates between gruff cynicism and guilt-racked despair, and the volatile Pinder (RC Ormond), who pivots on a dime between comic inanity and menacing rage. Richard Lee Warren also turns in a nicely shaded portrayal of Fletcher, finally facing a divorce after 11 years of dodging family life through his remote assignments.

Although Scott Damien hits all the scripted notes as the naive bureau chief who lacks the backbone for his job, he never finds anything more interesting than the role’s stereotypical cowardice. Cody R. Storts and Brian Searle flesh out the less-defined crew members, and Kelly Becerra makes a brief but poignant appearance as an abused prostitute.

Toward the finale, the play overreaches with some heavy-handed condemnation of media excesses, in references to “electronic leeches” and “feeding the beast of TV” -- but even its most extreme criticisms still cut way too close for comfort.

-- Philip Brandes

“El Salvador,” Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center, 11006 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Today-Sunday, next Friday and Sunday, 8 p.m. Ends next Sunday. $15. (818) 982-4881. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

Romance under

the microscope

The son of veteran actor James Caan, young Scott Caan once again demonstrates that he has talent above and beyond any nepotistic connections with his “Minor Holidays,” four one-acts at Playhouse West’s Studio Two.

Written and directed by Caan, who also appears in the evening’s closer, “Holidays” traces the vicissitudes of male-female relationships, from first meeting to final parting. With the exception of the final piece, which ventures into misplaced parody, the playlets bristle with distinctively contemporary, slice-of-life dialogue that is sometimes reiterative and forced, but just as often galvanic.

“The Kiss,” the first play, is set at a New Year’s Eve party, where a lonely man (Mark Pellegrino) has taken refuge in a back room. His solitude is disrupted when a woman (Laura Katz) barges in. She’s abrasive, mercurial and mouthy. She’s also beautiful -- the reason, we suspect, that this guy hangs around instead of running for cover. After a rocky start, Katz manages to make her capricious character sympathetic, and Pellegrino is a solid presence throughout. By the time the sweetly goofy ending rolls around, what was a poison pen letter has become a valentine.

At the beginning of “Tom & Jerry,” we think we may be in for that same bemused-male, inconsistent-female dynamic. The problem starts when Tom (Kenny Moskow) changes his Halloween costume from Gilligan to Popeye at the last moment. It’s the final straw for his girlfriend, Jerry (a particularly poignant Cris Mancuso), who is dressed in full Ginger regalia. Ginger insists that Tom change costumes, or they’re through -- an ultimatum that, on the surface at least, seems amusingly arbitrary.

But just when you thought Caan was going for the standard sitcom take, the piece evolves into an incisive examination of a faltering love affair, the most powerful offering of the evening.

Third on the bill is “The Shrew,” in which two lovelorn buddies, Val Lauren and Vince Jolivette, prepare to go out and celebrate Christmas but wind up belaboring their romantic failures. It’s a less compelling examination of relationships in their aftermath, without the face-to-face immediacy of the initial plays.

“A Man and His Barbecue,” the final piece, features Caan and Robyn Cohen as a weirdly perfect couple whose Stepford-esque exteriors mask their simmering hatred for each other. Amusing in itself, this full-blown parody seems out of place in this otherwise stringently realistic context.

-- F.K.F.

“Minor Holidays,” Playhouse West’s Studio Two, 10634 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends March 30. Free. (818) 971-7191. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Prague memories get lost in details

While filming on location in Prague in 1967, actress Hildy Brooks ducked into an artist’s studio to warm up. Upon encountering the studio’s inhabitant, dissident Czech sculptor Olbram Zoubek, Brooks began a unique relationship that would endure for the next 25 years.

That sums up “Reunion in Prague,” Brooks’ autobiographical duologue receiving its world premiere at the Lee Strasberg Creative Center. Drawing from more than two decades of correspondence, Brooks recounts her saga in an epistolary script pitched somewhere between “84 Charing Cross Road” and “Love Letters,” as overseen by Vaclav Havel.

Director-designer Jack Betts uses the tiny space to good effect, maneuvering Thomas Meleck’s lighting and Fritz Davis’ projections to maintain the timeline against the shifting political and philosophical content.

Brooks is a formidable actress, and in Jim Antonio’s Zoubek she has a worthy partner. The best thing about “Reunion” is this pair’s resonance, whether solo or in tandem, with his Czech soft-shoe and their fantasy waltz standouts.

However, although Brooks’ saga is fascinating, it isn’t exactly dramatic, her text conveying more information than the best interests of momentum warrant. Brooks’ desire to get everything in is understandable, but the amount of minutiae and extracurricular reference is more suited to the written page than the active stage.

-- D.C.N.

“Reunion in Prague,” Lee Strasberg Creative Center, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends March 16. $10-$15. (323) 650-7777. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.