Magic among a brothel’s ‘Tricks’

Romance intersects with necromancy in “Ten Tricks” at the Elephant Performance Lab in Hollywood. Writer-director Rick Pagano’s comparison study of prostitution and prestidigitation has considerable ambitions beyond raising eyebrows and tickling ribs.

Pagano’s aesthetic combines Pirandello with John Updike and Penn sans Teller. His setting is an archetypal whorehouse, where seriocomic encounters are punctuated by magic-act diversions. These are designed to illustrate the contradictions between physical desire and emotional connection.

Pagano’s smooth staging benefits from fine designs and super illusions. L.M. Pagano’s (Rick’s wife) antique-and-velvet setting, Don Cesario’s lighting, Michael Moreira’s music cues and the uncredited costumes create a surreal atmosphere of sly eroticism and latent dread.

The adept ensemble is another asset. Albie Selznick’s magician and Jossara Jinaro’s assistant are deliciously disturbing. Molly Brink, Brittany Ishibashi and Jinaro expertly shift gears to meet the requirements of their assorted harlots, from hilarious to harrowing.

Sam Hennings’ fey professor is excellent, as are Damien Leake’s wheelchair-bound veteran and Selznick’s nonstop babbler. Raymond Cruz is imposing, whether as frustrated yogi or inchoate callboy.

However, Pagano’s often-inspired writing is subject to tangents and unsubstantiated connections that blur his argument. For instance, the doomed madam registers largely because of Susan Blakely’s ripe emotional clarity; the character’s development is sketchy, as is the relationship of some fantasies to the whole. Nevertheless, though Pagano’s musings merit expansion, the immediate gratification they deliver is self-evident, and certainly recommended.

-- David C. Nichols

“Ten Tricks,” Elephant Performance Lab, 1078 Lillian Way, Hollywood. Thursdays- Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 9. Mature audiences. $15. (818) 655-6195. Running time: 2 hours

*

Tall tales on the

road to maturity

At Hollister High School in Central California, Kirk Ward -- captain of the varsity football and wrestling teams and student body president -- was invincible. After he graduated, though, reality set in. It turns out that being a big man on campus doesn’t automatically translate into being a big man in the world.

Ward pokes fun at his post-high-school misadventures in the solo show “3 Stories Tall” at Elephant Asylum Theatre.

The episodes are little more than the yarns a person might tell to friends: how Ward stared down death during a party brawl, during a run-in with his scissors-wielding grandmother and during a ticklish desert encounter with his estranged father and a confessed killer. But Ward’s performance turns them into something more.

Strong yet sensitive, cocky yet self-deprecating, the 32-year-old actor is a mass of contradictions. What’s more, he’s a gifted clown who has honed his skills through work with Culture Clash and the Actors’ Gang. And he’s a human sound-effects machine.

In his first story -- about the night he served as bouncer at a party -- he describes the stomach-sinking moment when a big but seemingly harmless “man-boy” he let through the door turns into a raging “man-beast.” To depict the guy’s Hulk-like transformation, Ward bares teeth, uses his fingers to shape devil horns atop his head and begins to speak in a deep, demonically possessed voice.

As the show’s writer, Ward comes up with some nice turns of phrase: “the Steinbeck hills” outside of Hollister, for instance. But his energetic performance -- under Stephen Kearin’s direction -- never entirely compensates for the fact that, at more than two hours, these slight stories go on for much too long.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“3 Stories Tall,” Elephant Asylum Theatre, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Sundays, 8 p.m. No performance this Saturday. Ends Aug. 3. $13. (323) 993-5797. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

*

Fanciful life of

‘Buddy Buddette’

There are so many spirals and segues in Jacqueline Wright’s “Buddy Buddette” at the McCadden Place Theatre that the imagination boggles, or at the very least blips.

The play, about Buddy, a bullied young dweeb who transforms at intervals into Buddette, a crime-fighting female superhero, is a fantastically creative mess that blurs between camp and sincerity. As with “Bing,” a “post-apocalyptic fairy tale” at Theatre of Note a couple of seasons back, Wright works a huge canvas with a Jackson Pollack splash.

Wright herself plays the title role -- make that both title roles -- in this sprawling, engaging yet frustrating epic, which literally spans the globe. Buddette has a magical ray gun concealed in her brassiere that turns violent men into females. Left to her own devices, Buddette would rather stay stateside and become the “queen” of the club dancing scene. But Buddy wants to find the “door” to Utopia, so Buddette reluctantly journeys to the Mideast to battle sexism in various Arab countries.

At one point, Buddy lands among a naked, peace-loving African tribe with a proclivity for hallucinogens -- the inspiration for his new “Up With People”-styled singing collective.

If that sounds a bit busy, it is. Indeed, Wright’s play is sometimes so exuberant, you want to slap it. However, director Matt Almos keeps the potboiler at the proper temperature, and the production, by the New York-based Ensemble Studio Theatre’s L.A. Project, features a solid cast. Particularly effective are Elizabeth Berridge as an agoraphobic rape victim and Dean Gregory (alternating in the role with Kevin Corrigan) as a rapist-turned-woman who falls in love with his former victim.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Buddy Buddette,” McCadden Place Theatre, 1157 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Aug. 24. (213) 368-9552. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

*

Raw vitality

in ‘Cabaret’

Feverish energy drives “Cabaret,” now at the Knightsbridge Theatre. The Tony winner receives a relentless environmental mounting.

“Cabaret” is the essential ‘60s musical, seminal in its staging.

Original director Harold Prince manipulated the Kit Kat Klub habitat of heroine Sally Bowles (Shari Shattuck, courageous and affecting) into simultaneous narrative commentary and metaphor for Hitler’s rise. Its emcee (the unearthly Corey Shiffman) serves as envoy, implicating us from disarming “Willkommen” to chilling finale.

“Cabaret” also inspired Bob Fosse, whose masterly 1972 film version haunts the property. Certainly, it haunted Sam Mendes’ celebrated Donmar Warehouse deconstruction, its 1998 Broadway edition winning multiple Tonys and ongoing capacity houses.

The Knightsbridge revival follows Mendes’ template. Director-designer Joseph P. Stachura’s raucous cast maintains an aptly warped Weimar attitude throughout.

Besides Shattuck and Shiffman, standouts include Melody Gillette’s superb Fraulein Schneider, Marisa Murray’s Nicole Kidman-flavored tart and Robert Mitchel’s operatic-voiced smuggler. Peter Finlayson’s Herr Schultz and Jarod Scott’s bisexual Isherwood-surrogate are easier at acting than singing.

This liability accompanies Mendes’ revisions, which stress raw vitality and thematic statement over structural integrity and musical heft. Musical director Debbie Lawrence’s Palm Court combo is valiant, and Lawrence’s party appearance recalls the legendary Spivy. Still, the absent reed and brass weight is telling -- adding a synthesizer seems advisable. Jeff Wallach’s dances are variable, here witty, there adequate. Other distractions range from Shattuck’s dubious hairstyle to sluggish scene transitions.

Regardless, the savage pertinence on display recommends this cautionary “Cabaret,” although purists and viewers requiring vocal polish and choreographic dazzle are forewarned.

-- D.C.N.

“Cabaret,” Knightsbridge Theatre L.A., 1944 Riverside Drive, L.A. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 6 p.m. Ends Aug. 24. $15-$20. (626) 440-0821. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

*

Looking out from

‘The Basement’

It’s 1969. Man has just walked on the moon, and America stands poised on the cusp of a new technological order. But for Sammy Fletcher and his fellow “old-timers” in the Los Angeles musician’s union, technology means the advent of synthesized music, fewer jobs for their membership, and a loss of the tumultuous human core that has always made their discipline so precarious, and so thrilling.

In a world premiere at Theatre Shed in Studio City, Shari Doran and K.W. Miller’s period drama “The Basement” takes place mostly in the basement of the union’s Local 47 -- a milieu well-realized in Thomas A. Brown and Gregory Serrao Bach’s appropriately shabby set.

Directed by Bach, the play riffs on a variety of themes including racism, the Vietnam War, and the loneliness of the artist who has sacrificed all for his or her craft. Some of those subjects are given short shrift, but the show’s jazzy, impromptu quality is disarming.

As the world-weary Fletcher, Sam Ayers heads a winning cast, which features Doran as the sexy girl singer and Miller as the new kid who sees the wave of the future. Michael Gregory is particularly effective as the aging roue whose chicks will never come home to roost, as is Blumen Young as a hard-drinking jazz man who squires his grandkids around between gigs. Rashawn Underdue, who plays a troubled black musician and Vietnam vet, does his best to flesh out an underdeveloped character.

Theatre Shed is small and steamy, and the cast must compete with a noisy but necessary fan. Lines are swallowed and frequently lost. Within the context of these impressively naturalistic performances, the actors need to turn up the volume.

-- F.K.F.

“The Basement,” Theatre Shed, 10806 Ventura Blvd., No. 6, Studio City. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Aug. 10. $14. (818) 785-4053. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.