Sometimes it’s hard not to look

There’s an implicit complicity in watching a play about voyeurism, and Son of Semele Ensemble uses it with unsettling effectiveness to immerse the audience in Carlos Murillo’s “A Human Interest Story (or The Gory Details and All).”

Inspired by the real-life 1987 gunshot suicide of a Pennsylvania politician during a televised news conference, Murillo’s drama weaves multiple narratives involving characters influenced in various ways by the incident and the underlying media-driven fascination with prying into private lives.

In one sequence, a shaken eyewitness (Edgar Landa) recounts the gory details of the shooting. In another, the mother (Dawn Hillman) of a Columbine-style “cyberpunk separatist wannabe” describes her son’s obsession with replaying the footage on his computer before engaging in his own act of teenage white male rage.

A satiric vignette involves a homemaker and dilettante artist (Natalie Sander) who finds her own media event (having her cat create abstract art with its paint-dipped paws) upstaged by the suicide. Finally, a spurned lover (Nathaniel Justiniano) describes a visit with supposedly happily married friends, and the disturbing results of his eavesdropping and diary-peeking.

In his minimalist staging, director Neil Donahue plays to the artifice of these interlocking stories, using cheery narrators (Jeremy and Sharyn Gabriel) to recite the stage directions. While the ensemble is generally capable, the exposition-heavy monologues shift the emphasis from performance to the evocative fury of Murillo’s writing.

-- Philip Brandes

“A Human Interest Story (or The Gory Details and All),” Cell2, 3301 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends March 7. $15. (213) 351-3507. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

Trying to get ahead of the pack

Ambitious novelty accompanies the Black Whole Theatre Company premiere of “Cynics,” sniffing and barking around the Theatre District at the Cast in Hollywood. This interactive allegory by Patrick Day and Ted Williams uses sporting greyhounds and audience energies to symbolize the human race.

Attendees move from a memorabilia-laden lobby past the snarling master sergeant (Jack Gogreve, who alternates with Chris Williams) to Chad Bell’s abstract racetrack set, well lighted by Wendy Newell. The canine contenders, portrayed by actors through animal mimicry and confessional monologues, are racing for their lives. Ringmaster Scapino (co-author Day, who also directs) collects spectator scorecards after each run. Each loser is escorted out to face the starting gun.

“Cynics” has solid assets in its rotating cast and ripe concept. Opening night found Kathryne Dora Brown’s doper, Joel West’s aggressor, Chad Gabriel’s whiner, Elena Almas’ strumpet and especially coauthor Williams’ nihilist leading the pert pack. Their oppressors are notable; Sweet Dick Willy’s announcements recall Doodles Weaver.

The coy, faux-poetic framing device traverses a shakier track altogether. It soon becomes apparent that audience input is ersatz. Granted, to wholly realize the conceit would require a textual scope that could stymie Tom Stoppard. This discrepancy emerges by default, through house reactions, the sympathetic noises for the victims instantly shifting to laughter with each gunshot. Such response seems partly due to a limp sound effect.

As a diversion, “Cynics” is enjoyable, but its obviated message is outstripped by the man-bites-dog execution.

-- David C. Nichols

“Cynics,” Theatre District at the Cast, 804 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. No shows March 26, April 2, 9, 16. Ends April 17. $15. (323) 850-8550. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Vivid scenes, bungled themes

In the mid-1990s, British playwright Mark Ravenhill made a splash with a play that contained simulated acts of raw, passionless sex and carried a title that few theater marquees or newspapers could display in full. As scandal transmuted into success, Ravenhill came to be regarded as everything from a crass opportunist to a brave cultural commentator.

The debate sparked by the double-gerund “Shopping and ... “ has continued through Ravenhill’s subsequent work, including 1998’s “Handbag,” now being presented in Santa Ana by Rude Guerrilla Theater Company.

Set in present-day Britain, the story focuses on lesbian spouses (played by Johnna Adams and Erika Tai) who conceive a baby with a male couple (Steven Parker and Keith Bennett). One mommy promises that there will be “a positive glut of parents here for you,” but even before the child is born, it’s clear he’s going to have to make it on his own, just as his emotionally stunted parents have.

Infidelities (depicted with copious nudity and sex) destabilize the family, while intermittent scenes travel back to Victorian times to eavesdrop on another household ill-prepared to raise a child. Extrapolated from Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” these characters are self-righteously proper but eerily cold.

On a stage that looks like a nightmarish nursery, director David Barton and his 11 actors bring these scenarios to life -- vividly, frighteningly so.

But the shocks don’t necessarily jolt the audience into awareness. Ravenhill means, perhaps, to indict a society that, for years, has been so hooked on instant gratification that it has lost its nurturing instinct. But the message is hard to read through the muck.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“Handbag,” Rude Guerrilla Theater, 200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Also March 4, 8 p.m. Ends March 7. $15. (714) 547-4688. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

When a Duke plays God

What a piece of work is “Measure for Measure”; how troubled in reason, how infinite in interpretations. With its meta-narrative of moral engineering -- a Duke pretends to take a sabbatical, only to stick around incognito and spy on his citizens, even entrap them into painful tests of their character -- it remains a case study of Shakespeare as master manipulator. He messes with audience expectations nearly as diabolically, if benevolently, as the Duke turns the screws on his unknowing polity.

Erin McBride Africa’s so-so new production, set rather half-heartedly in the 1920s, doesn’t have a strong take on questions of intention -- neither Shakespeare’s nor the Duke’s (Jeff Doba), nor that of the callow hypocrite Angelo (Edward C. Ellington), in whose rigid stewardship the Duke abruptly leaves Vienna, all the better to give it the social shock treatment he seems to feel it needs.

Surprisingly, the effect of this directorial diffidence is to leave the play’s gears exposed in fascinating ways. Some of this is clearly unintentional, as a variably talented cast struggles or plods through many a scene. But there are enough clues here to show that McBride Africa is attuned to the play’s central thematic challenge, which verges on the theological: Who is the Duke, after all, to play God like this?

The ‘20s backdrop, nicely costumed by Heidi Kushnatsian, neither adds nor detracts much. With a more consistent company the production’s thorny points might prick more sharply.

-- Rob Kendt

“Measure for Measure,” Sons of Beckett Theatre Company at Theatre/Theater, 4th floor, 6425 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Mar. 20. $15. (323) 465-3136. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Being peculiar but not meaningful

A surreal portrait of two suburban households fractured by neuroses and consumerism, “Pigs and Bugs” at the McCadden Place Theatre sports some first-rate comic performances -- but the cast has its work cut out extracting the consequential from the pretentious in Paul Zimmerman’s erratic script.

In Chris Field’s focused staging, the piece gets off to a promising start with the paranoid ranting of Russell (Enrico Colantoni of TV’s “Just Shoot Me”), a mediocre children’s book author who imagines enemies are out to kill him because of the subversive nature of his work.

Defeated by the complexities of buying a polo shirt in today’s over-hyped retail environment, Russell browbeats his long-suffering wife, Wanda (Tara Karsian) into shopping for him. Colantoni’s delivery employs the manipulative macho cadences of David Mamet dialogue -- until he caves in under Karsian’s well-timed withering retorts.

Equally contentious hysterics erupt in the home of Wanda’s agoraphobic sister, Harriet (a superb Christine Estabrook ), who, in a delightfully wacky argument, talks herself into feeling good about her intent to attend support group meetings even though she remains housebound. Faced with the prospect of her daughter (Anna Perilo) leaving for college, Harriet piles on the guilt (“I’ll just muddle through the way I did when your father left”). No wonder the girl encourages her uncle Russell to kill her mom, while Wanda prods Harriet to rid her of Russell.

Unfortunately, the ensuing antics increasingly indulge in eccentricity for its own sake. Just because behavior is peculiar doesn’t make it meaningful.

-- P.B.

“Pigs and Bugs,” McCadden Place Theatre, 1157 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends March 14. $15-20. (800) 413-8669 or www.echotheatercompany.com. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.