Political satire that passes the acid test

The time is 2000, circa the presidential election debacle. In a New York airport lounge, two duplicitous women trade stats on their latest married boyfriends. Beth is obsessed with a London-based magician, while Cindy feels certain that an impending child will snag her wealthy Texan.

Meanwhile, a future Supreme Court-appointed president materializes, spouting off about uncertain certainties and putting food on one’s family.

So spins the doublespeak of “Homewrecker” at the Evidence Room. Kelly Stuart’s dark satire examines infidelity and the legacy of George W. Bush with a sting that suggests Nora Ephron rewriting Al Franken on battery acid.

Under Bart DeLorenzo’s impish direction, a fierce cast delivers Stuart’s curdled wit with wicked elan. Lauren Campedelli’s Beth and Shannon Holt’s Cindy operate in expert lock-step. Holt provides a hysterical gallery of tics and gestures, and the bone-dry Campedelli remains a local treasure. Their climactic face-off might shock John Waters, and the Valium-flavored fade-out approaches Christopher Durang.

Don Oscar Smith, whose Impressionist take on Bush finds the id in idiotic, is a hoot. Stephen Caffrey limns his pivotal Brit with a mince that recalls Dan Aykroyd as Leonard Pinth-Garnell.

Alain Jourdenais’ raw lighting and raked set with Francis Bacon-inspired sliding backdrop are effective. Ann Closs-Farley’s costumes make instant character statements, and John Zalewski’s sound has typical aplomb.

However, Stuart’s argument lacks cohesion; the tie-ins between sexual and political betrayal are blurry, even oblique. Taken on its topical value, though, “Homewrecker” is nasty fun. Audiences dreading the Republican National Convention should find comfort in its savagery.

-- David C. Nichols

“Homewrecker,” Evidence Room, 2220 Beverly Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends Sept. 4. Mature audiences. $15. (213) 381-7118 or www.evidenceroom.com. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

*

Politically correct? ¡No!

“I asked Santa Claus for a nice, normal family,” says 9-year-old asthmatic Miguel, better known as Miggy. “I guess I’m being punished for something.”

His science fair rap opens “Spic-o-Rama” at the new TheatRevolution venue in Hollywood. John Leguizamo’s solo show about a dysfunctional Latino clan makes a tickling canvas for versatile actor Diego Villarreal Garcia.

A hit in 1993 in Chicago, “Spic-o-Rama” earned creator Leguizamo a Drama Desk award for its off-Broadway mounting, later adapted into an ACE-winning HBO special. A series of conjoined monologues depicts the Gigante family of Jackson Heights, N.Y., with accrued resonance.

After Miggy, we meet his brothers, starting with the Desert Storm veteran aptly called Krazy Willy. He berates his betrothed on their nuptial eve: “Why can’t she just lower her standards, like I did?” Peroxide-blond Rafael, a faux-British aspiring actor, claims Laurence Olivier as his birth father. Wheelchair-bound Javier waxes sardonic over his virginity and being a paternal embarrassment.

Their parents, Spandex-clad Gladyz and philandering Felix, emerge in caustic strokes. She quiets infants by pouring Coke in their baby bottles, while he offers a drunken wedding toast: “The first half of your life is ruined by your parents, and the second half is destroyed by your kids.”

This typifies Leguizamo’s text, unsubtle and politically incorrect yet hilarious and sometimes touching. Garcia is formidable, barring an over-calibrated attack that favors comic beats over emotional intent, the main lapse in director Brad Ashten’s serviceable staging. Brown Partington’s lighting and sound and Kofie Stewart’s Puerto Rico mural refract Garcia’s ripe talent, which recommends this warped domestic slide show.

-- D.C.N.

“Spic-o-Rama,” TheatRevolution, 6571 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Ends Aug. 29. Mature audiences. $16. (323) 871-1912. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

*

Odds and ends that don’t add up

To see art in the everyday world around us, in all its junky randomness, is not to lower one’s standards but to reawaken them. When, in the 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg placed gritty found objects on his canvases in his famous “combine” paintings, he wasn’t simply exalting the mundane but enlivening it.

With “29 Things to Do on a Rainy Day,” a loose adaptation of Charles L. Mee Jr.’s “bobrauschenbergamerica,” the S.O.B. Theatre Company has made the youthful mistake of confusing artistic freedom with indiscriminate doodling. While some of the vignettes forged by director Erin McBride Africa’s seven-member ensemble have a genuine sense of fun and surprise, too many have a feeling of arbitrary quirkiness. Worse, they’re rendered smirkingly, even sloppily, without the performative rigor such abstract, nonlinear material requires.

On a bare, black stage topped by a slide screen and littered with stage cubes, balls, a trash can, a can of umbrellas and a traffic barricade, a cast dressed in motley self-assembled costumes struts from one backstage door to another for short two-character scenes, wistful monologues, dopey dances and the occasional all-out set piece.

The most effective of these is wordless, as the actors intently fill cans, bottles, pots and pans with varying levels of water, then create evocative music with their makeshift instruments. That -- and a disarming speech midway through, in which an actor explains that the troupe found Mee’s script “on the Internet, and it was free” -- are the most authentically Rauschenbergian moments in this otherwise undistinguished hodgepodge.

-- Rob Kendt

“29 Things to Do on a Rainy Day,” S.O.B. Theatre Company at Theatre/Theater, 6425 Hollywood Blvd., 4th Floor. 8 p.m. Thursdays. Ends Aug. 26. $10. (323) 465-3136. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

*

Chekhov buried in useless details

Chekhov plays lend themselves to modernization -- proof of their timeless appeal. However, “A Winter People,” writer-director Chay Yew’s exotic updating of “The Cherry Orchard” at the Theatre @ Boston Court, contains so many meretricious embellishments that its potentially inspired concept is sadly overburdened.

The play is set in 1935 China, when the Communists, led by Mao Tse-tung, are gaining in influence. The timing aptly parallels Chekhov’s pre-revolutionary tale of languid aristocrats about to be buried by the tectonic forces of the Russian Revolution.

In this case, the owner of the imperiled orchard is Madame Xia (Emily Kuroda), a former singing star, now reduced to performing in San Francisco burlesque houses. Returning from a sojourn abroad, Xia faces the final dissolution of her estate, shortly to be sold at auction. Childlike profligates, Xia and her dilettante brother Han (Ken Narasaki) refuse to listen to the warnings of Liao (Greg Watanabe), a peasant turned millionaire who fruitlessly exhorts his aristocratic friends to take action.

Occasionally stunning, Jose Lopez’s lighting misses some obvious bets, while John Zalewski’s sound design is uncharacteristically remiss. (The sound of offstage axes is so bizarrely metallic, one initially misconstrues it as a technical glitch.) Yevgenia Nayberg’s sparse set consists mostly of movable trees, which may arguably function as part of an extended metaphor but do nothing for the sightlines of the show.

With a few exceptions, most notably Watanabe’s vigorous portrayal, the performances are so internalized and contemplative that much of Chekhov’s delicate irony is lost. More problematically, Yew lards his already overlong adaptation with belabored references to other Chekhov works -- for example, adding a third sister to the original two, then patching in a reworked curtain speech from “Uncle Vanya” for good measure. And why Xia’s eldest daughter has bound feet, while Xia herself has escaped that deforming convention, is simply baffling -- an example of the poorly observed “innovations” that lumber the proceedings.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“A Winter People,” Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 19. $30. (626) 683-6883. Running time: 3 hours.

*

An amusing bit of serendipity

As is explained in the opening number of “What If?” at the Hudson Mainstage, director Bruce Kimmel lost the rights to a succession of “straight” dramas before deciding, in final desperation, to put on a musical revue. After all, the theater was already rented, so what did Kimmel and company have to lose?

Very little, as it turns out. In fact, there’s plenty of fun to be found in this serendipitous if somewhat cobbled-together show, which is predicated primarily upon the simple rhetorical question, “What if?” -- such as, what if Irving Berlin had written “West Side Story” or Frank Loesser had taken a stab at “Sweeney Todd”? -- and so forth.

It’s a lightweight concept, to be sure, but one with plenty of punch, thanks largely to Kimmel’s clever parody lyrics, not to mention a winning cast that includes the riotous Susanne Blakeslee of “Forbidden Broadway” fame.

Unfortunately, Kimmel doesn’t trust his own concept, too often vacillating into unrelated numbers that have little apparent connection to the show. Not that a comedic musical revue requires much thematic thrust beyond consistent laughter. But in its present form, Kimmel’s odd amalgam of uproarious parody numbers and straight songs lacks that interstitial thread -- of narrative, of connecting theme or what have you -- that would have better blended the evening.

At times, it feels as if Kimmel let his actors pick some of their own material -- the kind of signature pieces that may showcase the performers’ personalities but do not necessarily suit the show.

However, as Kimmel and his cast breezily admit, “What If?” was concocted at the last moment to fit an existing time slot. Given a bit more structure, this could be a consistently solid entertainment. For now, Blakeslee is a pure delight, while Paul Haber, Alet Taylor and Ryan Raftery are all wily pros who can really sell a song. Tammy Minoff, who rounds out the cast, has plenty of gamin appeal, but she’s really a character singer, when the show could use a straight-up ingenue with a strong soprano.

-- F.K.F.

“What If?” Hudson Mainstage, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends Sept. 18. $20. (323) 960-7784. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.