Salon’s fetching tribute to divas

Refreshing directness drives “When Divas Were Divas ... Remembering Their Lives, Their Way” at the Brewery Art Colony in Los Angeles. Sharon L. Graine’s salute to five trailblazing black chanteuses succeeds on its convictions and gifted cast.

The drapery-laden setting, with archival slides on the side, provides a cabaret of the mind for hostess Lena Horne (Londa Parks). Her suave “Yesterday When I Was Young” prologue launches a running commentary that combines historical details with first-person reminiscences.

Disdaining introductions, Bessie Smith (Priscilla Stroud) barrels in to sell trademark bawdy songs and salty assertions with unfettered oomph. A half-lidded reverie by Billie Holiday (Karen L. Evans) gives acute testimony to how Lady Day embodied a world of pain in her immortal standards.

Josephine Baker (Shelli Boone) arrives in a flurry of French attire, her dressing room recollections of racist horrors hushing the house.

Thereafter, Sarah Vaughan (Charlotte Pope) sets it on its ear, bopping from sassy to sensitive and back with ease.

All five superb singing actresses spin their uncanny evocations of greatness into a virtual Ken Burns revue. Graine’s script and direction steers clear of maudlin pitfalls, with well-judged anecdotal choices. The execution prevails through spare means, particularly Valeria Watson’s elegant costumes, though the canned accompaniment requires forbearance.

The communal channel to those who cleared the way for the Beyonces and Queen Latifahs of today makes one regret the work’s brevity. The concept’s intended reach is hindered; the salutatory group finale is especially worthy of expansion.

Nevertheless, this fetching salon will thrill diva devotees.

-- David C. Nichols

“When Divas Were Divas ... Remembering Their Lives, Their Way,” Harry Mastrogeorge Theatre, Brewery Art Colony, 600 Moulton Ave., No. 103B, L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays; 6 p.m. Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 31. $25. (232) 227-5410. Running time: 65 minutes.

*

Waiting never wasted on Godot

In an eerie, wasted world, two men try to keep active and alert, fearful that if they don’t, they will drift into nothingness.

“We’re waiting,” one says.

“For what?” the other asks.

“I’m not quite sure.”

Sound familiar? Perhaps the title holds a further clue: “Godot Has Left the Building.”

John Griffin’s new play, presented by Blue Sphere Alliance and FourScore Productions at the Lex, echoes Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece, “Waiting for Godot.” It’s a derivative, perhaps even foolhardy endeavor, but -- surprise! -- it’s also cheeky and fresh enough to get audiences thinking anew about those pesky, eternal questions Beckett once posed.

Mark A. Thomson’s set, sparely lighted by Jeff Segal, is a dumping ground of modern society’s detritus -- computer keyboards, appliances, latte cups -- all painted a heavenly white.

A man in a dark business suit (Edward Griffin) enters, carrying a briefcase. He is lost and confused, but at least he’s not alone, for he soon discovers that another man (Scott David Nogi) is already here.

To pass time, the men invent games and try to write a movie. But in this strange, still environment, all illusions of accomplishment, of forward movement, have been stripped away, and so the men are left to think -- about life, death, consciousness, dreams, responsibility and more.

Like Beckett’s play, “Godot Has Left the Building” is built of seeming non sequiturs, semi-poetic flights of language and, under Jessie Gallogly’s wry direction, spurts of clownish activity.

Did the original really need to be rewritten? Well, the secondary characters -- an actor oblivious to beauty (Chad Mathews) and a blind old man on his own quest for meaning (Don Moss) -- are nowhere near as complex as Beckett’s. But the show does leave a person to ponder this statement: “Curiosity may have killed the cat, but apathy destroyed the world.”

-- Daryl H. Miller

“Godot Has Left the Building,” the Lex, 6760 Lexington Ave., L.A. 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays; 2 p.m. July 18 and Aug. 1. Ends Aug. 6. $15. (323) 957-5782. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

*

Ups and downs in face of insanity

In “From Bonkers to Botox” at the Stella Adler Theatre, Julianne Grossman details her lapse from a successful voice-over career into suicidal depression. Several suicide attempts and hospitalizations ensued before Grossman clawed her way back to mental health and happiness.

Those familiar with the cyclical nature of depression might find Grossman’s opening statement (“I stand before you a completely normal human being!”) somewhat disingenuous. However, Grossman is a gifted performer with a wicked sense of humor and a talent for the sizzling one-liner. Her masterly use of gallows humor does more to elucidate her subject than lashings of pathos could have done.

During the course of the play, Grossman portrays dozens of characters, assuming their various mannerisms and dialects with an aptitude nothing short of remarkable. Particularly effective are her characterizations of her fellow sufferers on the psych ward, whose comical tics become all the more poignant in light of their mental anguish.

Director Devon M. Schwartz keeps the action smooth and keenly paced. Mark Svastics’ versatile lighting helps set the mood, and Grossman’s own sound design is perfectly realized, a real boon to the show.

However, Grossman’s overlong tale could benefit from some trimming, and we never understand the precise reason for her psychic turnaround. Grossman gives the impression that she detoxed from a dangerous antidepressant early in her depression, but a reference to that drug late in the play proves particularly confusing. And the opener, in which Grossman casually enters the theater, greeting her friends as she works her way on stage, should be rethought. As it is, it seems self-congratulatory and exclusionary, especially for those not in Grossman’s inner circle.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“From Bonkers to Botox,” Stella Adler Theatre, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 25. $20. (818) 753-7788. Running time: 2 hours.

*

Skewed reality of how patriots act

In a nation soon to witness “American Candidate,” a reality TV show that will encourage the public to vote on a slate of mock presidential candidates, it’s not difficult to imagine the entertainment program envisioned in the new play “Patriot Act: A Reality Show,” which would invite the public to select the nation’s most patriotic person, “American Idol”-style.

Though the first minutes of Charles A. Duncombe’s play handily skewer the realm of reality television, the show quickly morphs into an examination of what it means to be a patriot. Toying with surrealism as it goes, the show, performed at City Garage, further transforms into an Orwellian/Kafkaesque nightmare about liberties sacrificed to a terrorism-obsessed government that tracks its citizens’ every move.

The set, also by Duncombe, presents the outlines of an isolation booth, which a man (Bo Roberts) has entered as part of what he believes to be the TV show’s selection process. He wears a “United We Stand” T-shirt and responds to questions with gung-ho gusto, while the interviewers (Kathryn Sheer, Paul M. Rubenstein and Tom Killam), at first given to smiles and spontaneous renditions of “America the Beautiful,” become ever more menacing.

For a while, the play, under Frederique Michel’s direction, seems poised to plumb the dark waters of absolutism, whether on the right or left. But nuance soon gives way to self-righteous alarm about a populace so radicalized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that it fails to question actions now being taken in the name of national security.

One-sidedness, however passionate, is never as effective as spirited, challenging debate.

-- D.H.M.

“Patriot Act,” City Garage, 1340 1/2 4th St. (alley), Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 5:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Aug. 8. $20. (310) 319-9939. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

*

What ifs of an Oedipal afterlife

Ever wish one of those bleak Greek bloodbaths could end with a group hug rather than a body count? In “The Oedipus Tree,” playwright/performer Tony Tanner imagines those unfortunate Theban royals Laius and Jocasta, and their accursed only child, Oedipus, coming to terms with their tragic destiny, as if in some afterlife family trauma clinic.

“This is going to be difficult,” warns a tour guide (Scott Ryden) as he gingerly reveals some awful truths to the late Laius (Tanner). Most of these we see coming -- that the stranger (Gregory Giles) who killed Laius in a roadside altercation, then usurped his throne and his wife Jocasta’s (Inger Tudor) bed, was the son Laius thought he’d dispatched as an infant.

There is one unexpected wrinkle here: that the Oedipal murder/incest curse was apparently brought on when Laius abducted Chrysippus (Adam Finkel) from a nearby town to be his personal boy toy. Who knew?

Despite a few jokes and some intriguing foreshadowing -- blustering Creon (Edmund L. Shaff) and beatific Antigone (Anna Lanyon) square off, anticipating their own tragedy -- Tanner doesn’t play this alternative myth-making for laughs, or even for irony. Instead this modest modern-dress production, performed in an auditorium on the noisy grounds of West Hollywood’s Plummer Park, is an earnest, static exercise in literary speculation, with an overlay of self-help pabulum. Laius even pronounces the purgatorial retrospective “empowering.”

While giving this famously ruined family some psychological closure seems a fine gesture, as theater “The Oedipus Tree” remains stubbornly barren.

-- Rob Kendt

“The Oedipus Tree,” the City of West Hollywood and Bare Bones Theatre at the Great Hall, Plummer Park, 7377 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. 7 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 31. Free; suggested donation $10. (323) 461-5570. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.