Taking a fervent British ‘Road’ trip

Stylistically speaking, Jim Cartwright’s debut play, “Road,” retains notable theatricality. This Samuel Beckett Award winner, which ranked No. 36 in the Royal National Theatre’s survey of the 100 most significant plays of the 20th century, has been a frequent regional offering since its 1986 Royal Court premiere.

A fervent indictment of Thatcherism, “Road” is red meat for thespians and designers. Those in WolfPack Production Company’s environmental revival at 2100 Square Feet devour it like, well, ravenous wolves.

The impoverished Lancashire ambience carries through from sidewalk to lobby to director Kevin Will, Tim Mann and Wendy Passmore’s brick-and-sheet-metal set. This, aided by Jenna Sjunneson McDanold’s lighting and Lindsay Jones’ sound, becomes a functional dance hall during intermission.

Characters and audience systemically interface, defying structural authority in an oblique blur of agitprop, poetry and ribald jargon. Our guide on this tour of British devolution is derelict Scullery (the affably maniacal Thom Sanford).

His stalwart colleagues mostly play multiple roles, with different groupings on alternate nights. At the reviewed performance, standouts included Susan Pingleton’s barfly mom, Marc Hart’s skin lad, Melinda Skilondz’s disco crone, Lauren Maher’s and Kate McKiernan’s gal pals, David Ackert’s sloshed soldier and Chris Schultz’s and Daryl Dickerson’s hunger strikers.

Yet the ensemble commitment only sporadically counters Will’s erratic tempos, which emphasize Cartwright’s dank lyricism at the expense of momentum. The resulting sluggishness, combined with certain dated aspects in this era of Tony Blair, creates occasional sinkholes along the admirable points of interest on this thoroughfare.

-- David C. Nichols

“Road,” 2100 Square Feet Theater, 5615 San Vicente Blvd., L.A. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 9. Mature audiences. $15; $12 with food donation to L.A. Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness. (323) 850-8766. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

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‘Blackbird’ a dark view of society

Baylis is 30 and his female companion, known as Froggy, is still in her teens, yet they hobble around their squalid Lower Manhattan apartment as though they’re just one step from the grave. Drugs, illness and injury have taken a toll, but still more debilitating are events in the past that have left them broken and seemingly beyond repair in Adam Rapp’s “Blackbird,” presented by Amok Film and Stage LLC at Theatre/Theater in Hollywood.

A writer of young-adult fiction as well as plays, Rapp is drawn to challenging topics: a 13-year-old’s hellish stay in a juvenile detention center in the youth novel “The Buffalo Tree,” for instance, and a young man’s devouring guilt about the accidental death of his sister in the play “Nocturne.” Rapp lists Harold Pinter and John Guare as influences, but “Blackbird” is most comparable to the adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s heroin-addled “Trainspotting” that was so harrowingly presented at the same theater last year.

Heroin gnaws at these lives too. Froggy (Pamela Kawada) is desperate for it one joyless Christmas Eve, while Baylis (Bruce Marshall Romans) gruffly tries to warn her off the stuff. Suffering from hepatitis, Froggy seems to melt away by the second, while Baylis, plagued by a herniated disc, clenches in pain whenever he tries to move.

Angry at the world, Baylis ends up yelling at Froggy even when he wants to be nice to her. She returns fire with well-aimed insults.

The profanity and frank sexuality are not for the faint of heart, and the subject matter is not for anyone who likes to exit a show smiling. But the actors bravely give themselves over to their roles, and director Constantin Werner keeps the action on a slow boil as, gradually, a sobering realization sets in: Baylis and Froggy are just collateral damage in a society that considers everything disposable.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“Blackbird,” Theatre/Theater, 6425 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. $15. (323) 871-9433. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

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Bloody visions in a chilly place

Sometimes it’s not easy being a theatergoer.

Consider: A scrappy company known as Zoo District returns to its origins in downtown Los Angeles, determined to create unexpected theater in an unexpected place. To check out the results, you venture along an especially dark street in the warehouse district, looking for a nondescript metal shed. Inside, you try to get comfortable in a hard seat while shivering in the evening chill that permeates the uninsulated, unheated structure.

It’s opening night of a horror show called “The Bloody Chamber,” and the audience seems to consist mostly of friends of the cast and crew. Yet they guffaw when the show gets overblown, and they applaud tepidly at the end. You can’t help but share their reaction.

The one unassailable achievement is the wonderfully creepy haunted house envisioned by designer Katherine Ferwerda and director Kara Feely. Over here, a disemboweled piano spills its guts onto the floor. Over there, a bed covered with blood-red sheets looks suspiciously like a sacrificial altar.

The story focuses on an innocent young bride (Tina Van Berckelaer) who marries a wealthy older man (Michael Shamus Wiles) and is promptly whisked off to his remote castle. He wears a black cape and has a low, menacing laugh. Not enough of a tip-off? Then take a look at the black-veiled ghosts of his former wives (Kristina Webber, Yuriana Kim and Shirley Anderson), who follow him everywhere.

As the girl realizes what she’s gotten herself into, twisted versions of such familiar stories as “The Snow Child” and “Little Red Riding Hood” insinuate themselves into the action. Parts of the story are mirrored in eerie, zombie-like dances. Hellhounds in “Equus”-like metal masks sniff at the edges of the action. And toward the end, an experimental film about ravenous wolf-people is projected onto the back wall.

Taken as a whole, “The Bloody Chamber,” which Feely adapted from a book of psychologically probing fairy tales by the late British writer Angela Carter, seems to say that love is but a fraction of a degree removed from violence, although people needn’t accept it that way. But Feely’s experimental storytelling makes things awfully difficult to understand.

-- D.H.M.

“The Bloody Chamber,” the Metal Shed, 660 Mateo St., downtown L.A. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 23. $15. (323) 769-5674. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.