‘Tartuffe’ takes aim at our times

Unsettling timeliness underwrites the tomfoolery of “Tartuffe,” now at the Odyssey Theatre. Moliere’s deathless satire of religious hypocrisy feels most prescient at present.

Moliere first presented his unfinished “Tartuffe” to Louis XIV’s court in 1664. Religious factions cried blasphemy, and “Tartuffe” was banned. This recurred when the completed play premiered in 1667 (under its subtitle, “The Imposter”), with the notoriety fueling European fervor for the forbidden work until 1669, when the ban was finally lifted.

Neither the play’s history nor its relevance escapes actor-director Jack Stehlin, whose modern-dress Circus Theatricals co-production blends coy classicism with raw internal rhythms and sitcom word pointing.

Diane Marie Taylor’s parquet-floored set supports this Rococo Rodeo Drive approach; ditto Melissa McVay’s keen costumes and Timothy Kiley’s stark lighting.

The actors are deranged. Stehlin’s riotous title fraud merges Tibetan lama, Hollywood agent and Berkeley women’s coffeehouse manager. Mark Bramhall’s pious patsy is superb, as are Gigi Bermingham’s acidulous maid and Daphne Zuniga’s thighmastering wife.

Other standouts include Strawn Bovee’s dowager, Daniel C. Gibbons and Nickella Dee’s lovers, Daniel Nathan Spector’s counsel and Kent George’s deliberately anachronistic deus ex machina.

The principal discrepancies concern tone. The show plays one way when Stehlin’s Tartuffe is on, another when he isn’t, with a tendency to savage overstatement that clashes with translator Richard Wilbur’s whimsical verses.

Yet the cascading farcical energies largely weather these bipolar shifts, and that, along with the thought-provoking aspects, recommends this loopy revival.

-- David C. Nichols

“Tartuffe,” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. Wednesdays -Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m., except June 1 and June 15, 2 p.m. only. Post-show discussions May 28, June 13; Ends July 13. $19.50-$25. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

*

Russians before the revolution

First produced at the Mark Taper Forum in 1981, “Chekhov in Yalta” is set in 1900, during the waning months of Anton Chekhov’s tragically short life. If that sounds like a setting for tragedy, it is. And it isn’t. Fittingly, playwrights John Driver and Jeffrey Haddow fuse delicate humor with keen pathos in their beautifully constructed drama, which subtly and ingeniously parodies Chekhov’s writing style. Bruce Gray’s light-handed staging at Theatre 40 ensures that the humor edges out the pathos, just as Chekhov would have wished it to.

Based on actual events, the action is set entirely in the seaside resort of Yalta, where Chekhov (Richard Hoyt Miller), accompanied by his spinster sister, Masha (Amy Tolsky), has retreated for a rest cure. Chekhov’s good friends and fellow literary luminaries Ivan Bunin (Jonathan Read) and Maxim Gorky (Ilia Volok) are also in residence.

This play’s cast of characters reads like a “Who’s Who” of pre-revolutionary Russia. Also in town for a tour of “Uncle Vanya” is Konstantin Stanislavski (Robert MacKenzie), the flamboyant director of the Moscow Art Theater who has made an inadvertent enemy of Chekhov with his humorless productions of the delicate works that Chekhov insists are comedies. A more welcome distraction is the beautiful Olga Knipper (Kathrine Bates), the company’s resident star and Chekhov’s wife-to-be.

The pivotal plot point concerns the fact that Chekhov may give his newest play, “The Three Sisters,” to another theater for production -- a defection that would destroy the financially strapped Art Theater. But around that central crisis, typical Chekhovian dalliances eddy. Stanislavski’s neglected wife, Lilina (Cynthia Gravinese), has a fling with her husband’s producing partner (David Hunt Stafford), while Masha tries to snare the disinterested Bunin. Meanwhile, Fyokla (a radiantly funny Nanette Hennig), a servant of very little brain, gets bitten by the acting bug.

Always underscoring the proceedings are the distant rumblings of revolution, the keen and elegiac knowledge that these characters are on the cusp of massive change -- and that most of them won’t fare well in the new order. The excellent cast makes us feel the tragedy of that inevitable passage, but the pall is cast lightly. In the interim, before their world erupts, we are richly entertained.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Chekhov in Yalta,” Theatre 40, 241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends June 1. $18-$20. (310) 364-0535. Running time: 2 hours.

*

Shakespeare as sitcom writer

You sit in front of the television, clicker in hand, aimlessly flipping through the channels. “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Three Stooges,” pirate epic, variety show, soap opera, mob movie, game show, religious program, PBS arts programming....

This is the humorous effect of the Company Rep production of “The Comedy of Errors,” which treats Shakespeare’s play as a series of fast-moving comic sketches that pop out of a giant TV screen. Conceived and crafted by director Hope Alexander, the presentation mirrors today’s restless, attention-deficit culture while slyly suggesting that if Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be writing at least part time for Hollywood.

An early Shakespeare comedy, “Errors” stands up well to such tampering. It’s really just a comic romp to begin with, modeled after Roman comedies involving twins separated in youth who end up in the same place years later, causing much confusion.

Alexander compresses the script to an intermissionless 90 minutes and keeps the stage abuzz with comic complications arising from people’s inability to distinguish between twin servants (Brandon Ford Green and Stephen Brewster) and their twin masters (Joe Garcia and John Edwin Shaw).

As is often the case in these scenarios, the wily servants are given the best gags, and Alexander further tweaks the humor by casting actors who look nothing alike. Brewster seems to be channeling Robin Williams as he morphs through a seemingly endless succession of routines, while Green, the show’s biggest standout, is blessed with an elastic voice, face and body that seem fueled by a thousand cups of coffee.

Laughs also flow when Garcia blunders upon his twin’s neglected wife (Melanie Ewbank), who, mistaking him for her husband, wrestles him to the ground and gives him the mother of all wedgies -- behavior entirely at odds with her false front as a demure, helpless soap-opera heroine.

Not all of the performances rise to the concept’s challenges, and not all of Alexander’s ideas suit the text. Still, there’s no stifling the giggles as the show attempts every gag in the book: a sword fight with chopsticks, a ventriloquist-and-dummy routine, a Michael Flatley step-dance extravaganza, a ruler-wielding, disciplinarian nun ... and on and on. It all humorously amplifies Garcia’s overwhelmed cry to the heavens: “Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?”

-- Daryl H. Miller

“The Comedy of Errors,” the Company Rep at American Renegade Theatre, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends June 15. $20-$25. (818) 506-7550. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

*

An extreme view of Strindberg

August Strindberg goes through the absurdist blender in “Strange Beliefs,” cutting a wide, weird swath at Sacred Fools Theatre. The latest offering by Theatre Movement Bazaar is a smoothly mounted, impenetrable deconstruction of Sweden’s dour playwright.

Theatre Movement Bazaar is the brainchild of Sacred Fools artists-in-residence Tina Kronis and Richard Alger. Their work fuses movement, sound, words and design into a deliberately odd conceptual ethos.

Previous shows include “dumbshOw” (Russian authors) and “Cirque Picnique” (William Inge and the McCarthy hearings). Now comes “Strange Beliefs.”

It occurs in a futuristic, chartreuse-walled health spa, augmented by wooden benches and observation cubicles. As sludgy house music pours forth, the duskily clad ensemble haltingly enters from either side, women opposite men.

They split off into random groupings that slowly evolve into a synoptic series of poses, phrases and portentous encounters. These transpire against an eclectic soundtrack of looped snippets ranging from Irving Berlin to “Swan Lake,” with everybody circling the theater by the conclusion.

Kronis’ sure direction affords her zany cast nonstop opportunities for display, which all 16 certainly seize. However, the cracked deadpan surface can’t disguise a lack of textual coherence, and the links to Strindberg are best left to thesis candidates.

There is obvious creative intent and some genuine humor here; fans of academic theater may well be enraptured. Audiences unaccustomed to unsubstantiated bizarreness, however, may just be baffled.

-- D.C.N.

“Strange Beliefs,” Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, L.A. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends June 21. $15. (310) 281-8337. Running time: 80 minutes.

*

Rosy visions of religious tolerance

When it comes to the political correctness meter, “Nathan the Wise” scores off the charts. The play’s three heroes -- a wise Jew, a fiery Christian and a sensible Muslim -- are balanced characters who, if not initially free of prejudice, are so open-minded and richly discerning that a happy ending is inevitable.

Would that real life were so simple. The most remarkable thing about the play, now being presented at the Lillian Theater by the Southern California Jewish Repertory Theatre, is that it was written more than 200 years ago. In light of that period, this innovative drama by German playwright Gotthold Lessing seems almost miraculously evenhanded and humane. Censored in his own day, Lessing had the distinction of being banned by the Nazis for his sympathetic treatment of his eponymous Jewish hero.

It seems strange that a play of such unimpeachable goodwill could have excited controversy at any historical juncture. Indeed, with a couple of exceptions, the characters are largely benign stereotypes, obvious exponents of the religious tolerance that Lessing ardently espoused. However, if the characters are simplistic, the plot is bafflingly Byzantine, a medley of misplaced identities and plot twists.

The story, set in 12th century Jerusalem, concerns the forbidden love between the Jewish Rachel (Dawn Carroll) and the Christian Kurt (Alexander Scarlis). Kurt, a Knight Templar captured in battle, was spared by the Muslim ruler, Saladin (Gary Lamb), because of his resemblance to Saladin’s dead brother (pay attention: that’s a clue.) A bastard by birth -- or is he? -- Kurt saves Rachel from a fire, kindling a romance in the process. But Rachel’s father, Nathan (Tony Montero), a wise and wealthy Jewish merchant, suspects a shocking surprise in Kurt’s past and withholds his blessing from the match until he can investigate Kurt’s lineage. That rankles the fiery Kurt, with near-fatal results. Suffice to say that Rachel’s lineage contains a surprise too -- a revelation that could cost Nathan his life.

The production, helmed by veteran director Pavel Cerny, provides a rare opportunity to see this seldom produced and historically fascinating drama. Unfortunately, laborious pacing and shallow performances strain the audience’s attention span. Many of the actors, particularly Montero in the title role, skim along the surface of their stereotypes rather than delving into the good old postmodern Method-ist subtexts that would have enlivened this difficult but worthy play.

-- F.K.F.

“Nathan the Wise,” Lillian Theater, 1076 N. Lillian Way, Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends June 28. $20. (323) 293-7257. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.