Finding bravery in a life of banality

Courage is hardly the quality we first associate with Adele Scabaglio, the timid and decidedly unglamorous waitress who recounts her mundane life story from a solitary perch atop her New York apartment building in “Weight on the Roof” at the Court Theatre. Yet Audrey Wasilewski’s razor-sharp solo performance consistently surprises and delights as she mines humor, pathos -- and, yes, bravery -- from Adele’s struggle to break her cycle of self-defeat.

The emotional impact is all the more impressive given playwright Eric Houston’s determination to stay within the boundaries of everyday experience. Told in three rooftop monologues spanning a 10-year period, Adele’s adventures never get more exotic than landing a waitressing job and dating one of her customers. For any of them to matter, we have to understand how elusive even these little victories are for a woman so beaten into passivity that she’d be perfectly content to lie on the couch watching TV forever.

Adele’s story plays like a Manhattan version of “Shirley Valentine,” sharing far too much with its predecessor to earn accolades for originality.

Like her Liverpool counterpart, Adele finds her way to a bigger life than she’d ever dared hope for. But under Gerry Cohen’s insightful staging, Wasilewski makes Adele’s journey uniquely her own. Her perfect Brooklyn Italian accent and mannerisms make it easy to forget we’re watching a performance, until she slips into other equally well-rendered characters in Adele’s narratives.

It’s possible to have too much of a good thing, however. Wasilewski’s ability to define Adele so quickly and completely renders superfluous many redundant plot details that build character realism but not momentum. Why take two-thirds of the story to reach the real turning point? The first two acts could safely be collapsed into a single tighter one. Houston could hardly have wished for a more capable debut to reveal strengths and areas for improvement.

-- Philip Brandes

“Weight on the Roof,” Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Aug. 10. $20-$25. (800) 595-4849. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

*

She’s got moves, but it’s not enough

Drums thunder as the sultry dancer enters the stage, shaking every conceivable inch of her body.

This is Simone Simone, the alternate personality of dancer-actress Sloan Robinson in her one-person tell-all, “It’s a Good Thing I Knew How to Dance,” at Stage 52 Playhouse.

Throughout this autobiographical show, the zesty Simone keeps trying to commandeer Robinson’s body to tell a happier story than Robinson is sharing. Happier than, at age 5, seeing her schizophrenic mother committed to an institution. Happier than, in her 20s, being widowed after just a few months of a dream marriage. But Robinson pushes ahead, determined to share what she’s learned.

Reliving some of these events is, surely, an act of courage -- and that’s admirable.

As a writer, though, Robinson needs to streamline. Too many details -- an in-depth description of a prom dress, for instance -- contribute nothing to the story’s main thrust. The retracing of Robinson’s show-business career could go too. To be frank: There’s not much of note, other than a turn as Dorothy Dandridge in the solo play “Yesterday Came Too Soon.”

Sheer energy keeps the show moving, though. Robinson depicts a lively assortment of characters and breaks into song or dance when the feeling overtakes her. Moods are enhanced by Aeros DeAnda Pierce’s live piano underscoring, and, under Erma Elzy-Jones’ direction, everything has an artful sheen.

As the title indicates, Robinson means to teach us to keep moving, no matter what blocks the path. Too bad she sets up so many of her own obstacles.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“It’s a Good Thing I Knew How to Dance,” Stage 52 Playhouse, 5299 W. Washington Blvd., L.A. Sunday and July 20, 5 p.m.; July 17-19, 8 p.m. Ends July 20. $20. (323) 860-3225. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

*

‘Ubu Rex’s’ satire lacks sharp bite

“Isn’t injustice just as good as justice?” So claims the terminally asinine “Ubu Rex,” now at the Del Mar Theatre.

Alfred Jarry’s seminal 1896 diatribe on absolute power and its oafish abusers affords many opportunities for pertinent analogy and invention. The French-born Jarry presaged absurdism, conceiving his antihero Ubu, basest humanity personified, as commentary on contemporary social indolence.

Beginning with “Ubu Rex” -- a parody of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” that scandalized Paris from its opening excremental epithet onward -- through “Ubu Cuckolded” and “Ubu Enchained,” Jarry fuses provocation with ridicule, tilling the ground for Beckett, Ionesco and beyond.

Resolute intent informs this Silo Theatre Company revival, which resembles a freewheeling actors’ lab. Director Judith M. Smith’s white-faced company traverses the assembling audience, ritually segueing into Cyril Connolly and Simon Watson Taylor’s translation.

Both gender-switched title usurpers are notable. Mageina Tovah’s posturing, syllable-mangling Pa Ubu morphs Lisa Kudrow and Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons,” while Simon Russel’s burly Ma suggests Peter Boyle as Dainty June on Claritin.

Gilbert “John” Echternkamp’s roiling Captain MacNure, John Madison Tye’s sonorous Tsar Alexis and Sarah Winningham’s Diane Baker-esque Prince Boleslas typify the ensemble vigor.

Yet collegiate zeal doesn’t equal caustic ordeal. Co-designers Smith and Tovah’s rehearsal-hall scheme, though resourceful, is undernourished, with the reliance upon flashlights perhaps financially dictated but hackneyed.

More crucially, the approach lacks the requisite brutality, more suited to “Tom and Jerry” than jarring Jarry. Successful satire requires that its targets are savaged, but this game effort only lifts its leg and marks its territory.

-- David C. Nichols

“Ubu Rex,” Del Mar Theatre, 5036 Pico Blvd., L.A. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends July 26. $10. (323) 692-8108. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

*

Theater greats, together at last?

In “Much Ado About Sondheim,” playing a limited run at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s Feinstein’s at the Cinegrill venue, cabaret fixture Peisha McPhee and longtime collaborator Mel Dangcil explore the corollaries between William Shakespeare and Stephen Sondheim.

At least, so purports McPhee’s latest set, conceived and directed by pianist-music director Dangcil, who along with McPhee runs the Cabaret Performance Workshop at Los Angeles City College, profiled on the Discovery Channel’s “Slice of Life” series.

McPhee, a determined old-school merge of Linda Eder, Florence Henderson and Kathie Lee Gifford, couldn’t ask for a lovelier room than Feinstein’s, whose configurations compress a Las Vegas showroom into more intimate proportions, with superb lighting and a very live acoustic.

This last proves perilous: Every approximated rhythm and tonal dominant of Dangcil’s florid accompaniment and each belted spread tone and wavering pianissimo of McPhee’s Julie Wilson-molded delivery are microscopically exposed, flubbed lyrics and all.

Moreover, the central notion never reaches fruition beyond decoration. The comparisons are arbitrary -- “Not While I’m Around” declaimed in iambic pentameter, for instance. Nor does McPhee’s practiced, digressive patter carry much thematic weight, and the pairing of Sondheim’s “I Remember” with Emily’s climactic farewell from Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” is inexplicable.

Such histrionic tricks, like McPhee’s references to Shakespeare and Sondheim as “Will” and “Steve,” may enchant her fans. Devotees of the Bard and Broadway’s master musical dramatist, however, might feel that this standard-issue offering ultimately amounts to much ado about McPhee.

-- D.C.N.

“Much Ado About Sondheim,” Feinstein’s at the Cinegrill, Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Mondays, 8:30 p.m. Ends July 21. $20 cover; $15 food and/or beverage minimum. (323) 769-7269. Running time: 70 minutes.