Nothing is ‘Lost’ in sylvan setting

Abrupt shifts in tone, idiosyncratic language and the absence of a tidy wrap-up make “Love’s Labour’s Lost” the most challenging of Shakespeare’s comedies. All the more reason to applaud the exceptional clarity and coherence of Michael J. Arndt’s lush outdoor staging for the eighth annual Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival at Cal Lutheran University.

As in years past, the Kingsmen’s professional lead performers spearhead a focused and nuanced production that far exceeds typical expectations for an academic setting, while the modest admission and scenic environs easily justify an excursion to Moorpark.

Arndt’s resetting of the play in the early 1800s, as entrenched neoclassicism began to give way to dawning Romanticism, smartly dovetails with Shakespeare’s story. A young king and his three aristocratic friends pompously renounce women to devote themselves to intellectual study, only to have their lofty ambitions come crashing to hormonally crazed earth with the arrival of a French princess and her trio of ladies-in-waiting.

Bona fide hilarity ensues as the four gentlemen try to circumvent their vows of celibacy. Particularly well staged are the scenes in which each eavesdrops on the stratagems of his cohorts, and the quartet’s visit to the ladies’ camp flamboyantly disguised as Russian Cossacks.

Among a generally solid cast, standouts include Ryan Lee as the most perceptive of the amorous young men, Marc Silver as the inept peasant clown, Robert Nairn’s pompous schoolmaster and Derek Medina’s eccentric Spaniard, smitten with a local wench.

This play’s unusually abundant obscure puns, topical allusions and antiquated vocabulary demand -- and receive -- extra care with the language (Kevin Kern’s chaperon is notably adept here). Even when meter is sacrificed for meaning, the trade-offs are judicious.

Most important, Arndt’s staging doesn’t compromise the complexity that makes “Labour’s” so problematic. Rather than soft-pedal the devastating news at the close of the play that the princess’ father has died, the production shifts gears to accommodate the sudden collapse of callow infatuation and the shouldering of adult responsibilities in the face of mortality.

-- Philip Brandes

“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” Kingsmen Park at California Lutheran University, 60 W. Olsen Road, Thousand Oaks. 8 p.m. today through Saturday and July 16-18. General lawn seating: $8; 18 and under, free. Limited box seating: $35 and $50. (805) 493-3455. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

*

Very engaging ‘Gentlemen’

In the right hands, even a lesser Shakespeare play can be a lark. And while it’s hard to name a lesser Shakespeare comedy than the seldom-performed “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” it would likewise be hard to find a more lively, committed “Two Gents” than the one the Independent Shakespeare Company is offering for free at the Hollyhock House amphitheater in Barnsdall Art Park.

A youthful Shakespeare effort, “Two Gents” has a callow take on the caprices of young love. The cad Proteus (David Melville) first vows devotion to Julia (Andrea Gwynnel Morgan), then falls for his best friend’s girl, Sylvia (Melissa Chalsma). Proteus even engineers the exile of his friend, Valentine (Aaron Morgan), so he can have Sylvia all to himself.

Shakespeare adds a grab bag of fools, lackeys, even an impassive dog (Lorenzo Gonzalez), for little purpose but to garner guffaws.

And they do. Invoking the tradition of Renaissance traveling players, ISC uses a minimum of theatrical flourishes. The simple props, and Talin Mardirosian’s often witty costumes, serve only to advance the storytelling.

The ISC troupers have a crowd-pleasing, commedia-inflected flair and a firm, supple grasp of the Bard’s language. If a few veer from deliciously broad to coarsely hammy, that doesn’t spoil the fun.

Male leads Melville and Morgan are endearingly daffy. The women are even better: Chalsma is as willful as she is willowy, while Gwynnel Morgan has a marvelously playful comic touch. Among the clowns, gruff Danny Campbell registers most winningly.

Under Chalsma’s ensemble-focused direction, this “Two Gents” raises some well-earned smiles of a summer night.

-- Rob Kendt

“The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Independent Shakespeare Company at the Hollyhock House, Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. 7:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. No performances July 10-11. Ends July 18. Free. (818) 710-6306. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

*

Family drama with a jazz underscore

Call it “The Brass Menagerie.” In “Side Man,” Warren Leight’s evenhanded but unflinching 1996 memory play, the narrator looks back on a childhood he spent mediating between a distant trumpet-player dad and a loud, bitterly disappointed mom, and looks back further to discover how they got that way.

In director Christopher Hart’s new revival, Leight’s play retains its formidable chops, even with a few missed downbeats.

The cast is nearly perfect: As Gene, the jazzman who’s good only for music, Jack Conley is eerily right, with a long face and feline cool that suggest Tom Waits’ taller, quieter brother. As his wife, Terry, whose high-strung dreaminess makes a tragic match for Gene’s emotional aphasia, the endearing Ellen Greene dances on the knife’s edge between vivacious and volatile, then slices through to steely resignation.

As Gene’s bandmates, wiry Eddie Kehler, glad-handing Todd Truly and slick John Mariano expertly mine the comedy from the play’s many scenes of profane gallows humor and after-hours badinage. And in Paula Post’s astute costumes, they always look their parts.

As son Clifford, David Barry Gray performs affectingly opposite the others. Unfortunately, most of the part is straight-out narration, which Gray delivers with the glib overemphasis of a TV newscaster.

And while the small space’s smoky intimacy puts us almost inside the action, Gary Randall’s resourceful set doesn’t quite master all the play’s shifting times and spaces.

Still, this “Side Man” hits enough of the right notes to put across the play’s plaintive tune.

-- R.K.

“Side Man,” Malibu Stage Company, 29243 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. 8 p.m. Fridays through Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 18. $25. (310) 589-1998. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

*

The dilemmas of downsizing

A glut of current concerns fills “One World” at the Elephant Theatre. Robert J. Litz’s seriocomic parable of globalization is a promising play of protest, despite some textual infelicities.

The core target: American corporate privatization and its domestic and global ramifications. A ritual-like prologue on Joel Daavid’s fine stone-and-decay-laden set precedes the outsized antagonist, Mr. IMF (Brendan Connor, melding Drew Carey’s acid and Dick Cheney’s id).

Forklift operator George (the engaging Robert Brewer), finance hotshot Peter (Don Cesario) and parolee Curtis (Keith Ewell, a find) are the intertwining principals. Their partners are homebody Ellen (a subtle Cheryl Huggins), driven real estate broker Elizabeth (Mim Drew) and single mom Stephanie (Tara Thomas, incisive). Litz pits their random interconnections, which include Peter and Elizabeth’s disaffected daughter, Brandi (Jade Dornfield), against unexpected issues that arise when a New Jersey corporation downsizes.

Bolstering the tripartite narrative is the Ephebe. This Greek (and Malaysian, and Haitian, ad infinitum) chorus, beautifully played by Daniel McCoy, Nicole Fazio, Terrence Flack, Patty Onagan, Tim Starks and Marco Villalvazo, proves we’re “One World.”

The plot, in fact, could use more truthful grit and less politically correct formula. The Act 1 rising action favors clever connections and surface exposition over representative behavior and dialogue. Finally, though, Litz’s instincts and irony make an apt statement about the underbelly of outsourcing.

Director David Fofi controls a smart execution, with Bosco Flanagan’s lighting, Christopher Game’s sound and Allison Leach’s costumes achieving unobtrusive unity. Fofi’s ensemble responds in kind, rendering the playwright’s overbroad strokes to mounting intrigue and nuance. If Litz continues his refining process, this pertinent populist cautionary tale is going places.

-- David C. Nichols

“One World,” Elephant Space Theatre, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends July 24. Mature audiences. $20. (323) 962-0046. Running time: 2 hours.

*

In search of a common language

“Old ways never die. They just mutate.” This is but one of the many converging ideological lines that constitute “The Tower,” currently receiving its Los Angeles premiere at Cell2. Matthew Maguire’s 1989 fantasia revisits the biblical account of humanity’s linguistic divide in an ambitious modernist manner.

At its center is urbanite Ruth (the arresting Lisa Tharps), rendered inexplicably mute. Her surreal gyrations provide talking points and subtext as her husband, Jacob (musical director Matthew McCray), and her medical team (Robert Babish, Michelle Silver and Darryl Ordell) merge with her inner quest.

Thereafter, “Tower” layers elements of Joseph Chaikin, Pina Bausch and William S. Burroughs to build an allegorical Babel-rouser of post-Internet import.

Playwright Maguire, himself an Obie-winning actor, gives director Barbara Kallir and her Son of Semele Ensemble team malleable material. Though lacking chemistry, Sharps and McCray move skillfully between realities, with the channeling passages especially taut. Babish, Silver and Ordell careen between cartoonishness and conviction with cohesion, backed by indivisible choristers Amanda Boggs, Jennifer Marley, Welton Thomas Pitchford and Richard Van Slyke.

Paul DeDoes’ cylindrical set, Misty Ayres’ tactile costumes, the prismatic effects of Maxwell Ross Pierson’s lighting and Bob Blackburn’s sound erect an imposing avant-garde edifice around Maguire’s stylistic playfulness. Though Sharyn-genel Gabriel and Anthony Powell’s choreography has its precious aspects, like Andrew Ingkavet’s original music it suits Maguire’s intent.

Whether all this seems portentous or pretentious will depend on one’s appetite for cerebral theater of kinetic display. I found “The Tower” fascinating, challenging and opaque. Audiences for whom thespian pyrotechnics and subliminal topicality do not suffice may resist its altitude.

-- D.C.N.

“The Tower,” Cell2, 3301 Beverly Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. 7 p.m. Sundays. Dark July 4. Ends July 18. $18. (213) 351-3507. Running time: 2 hours.

*

Pagans, priests and ‘Snow White’ too

The 24th Street Theatre has done more than most local companies to raise the bar for quality family theater, exposing edgy, sophisticated artists with adult followings to new audiences through its annual “Saturday Explorer” series.

Its philosophy, unfortunately, is only partially realized in the company’s ambitious new production, “Mirror Mirror.”

Meant to be a substantive, adult take on “Snow White,” a Dark Ages tale with current world-event resonance, the show, while decidedly un-Disneyish, falls short of its potential, despite a cast of pros and the creative depth of director Debbie Devine and her co-writers, Tina Kronis and Richard Alger of Theatre Movement Bazaar.

Vanity and envy drive a dead queen’s sister (Joanna Daniels) to seize power from her royal brother-in-law (Steven Ruggles) and plot the demise of her innocent niece (Mary C. Loveless, an overly precious princess). The usurper’s path toward corruption (“The people follow an image, not a person,” intones the pedantic magic mirror) is played out against a clash between old and new religions embodied by sympathetic pagan “guide” Drasil (David Dionisio) and zealous Christian priest Father Paulo (Randy Irwin).

It’s an intriguing idea, and lighting designer Christopher R. Boltz’s shadows, illuminations and liquid projections, along with set designer Tom Buderwitz’s metal bars and dominant, time-turning, wooden wheel structure, provide style and substance -- as does composer Brenda Varda’s evocative soundscape.

Performances during the opening weekend, however, seemed under-rehearsed or lacking in conviction, and at times they, and the play, veered perilously close to unintentional camp.

Loveless, in a secondary role as a queen in labor, punctuated her rushed lines with cartoonish shrieks of pain; when Daniels’ bad aunt, fully embracing her dark side, confronted both priest and pagan leader, the scene played with unfortunate echoes of “The Exorcist” and “The Wizard of Oz,” rendering anticlimactic a powerful message of all-embracing, redemptive love.

-- Lynne Heffley

“Mirror Mirror,” 24th Street Theatre, 1117 W. 24th St., L.A. 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, through Aug. 1. $20; 15 and younger, $10. Appropriate for ages 10 and older. (213) 745-6516. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.