Juicy story of betrayal, extra pulp

Playwright Eric (“On the Verge”) Overmyer’s signature love affair with language embraces the hard-boiled lexicon of noir in “Dark Rapture,” a moody, modern-day thriller at the Evidence Room.

This impressively staged caldron of larceny, sex, deceit and murder gets off to an incendiary start with antihero Ray (Nick Offerman) watching a Bay Area hillside fire consume his home with the kind of glee usually reserved for arsonists and Enron traders. “This is what we really want deep down -- catastrophe and chaos,” he waxes to a seemingly chance acquaintance, an amiable Cuban named Babcock (David Mersault).

Of course, pulp genre protocols dictate that no encounter is innocuous and no one is who they seem -- and Overmyer remains a devotee of those rules even as he bends them into a dizzying narrative rollercoaster spanning Los Angeles, Cabo San Lucas, Seattle, New Orleans and Key West. (Keith Mitchell’s modular two-level set uses the expansive venue to great advantage.) The noir staple of the reinvented identity is a main theme in “Dark Rapture.” Seizing the chance for a fresh start, Ray lets everyone think he died in the blaze. That includes his scheming, unfaithful wife, Julia (Katy Selverstone), who also figures the fire got the $7 million in laundered money she’d been holding for a pair of gangsters (Don Oscar Smith, Dylan Kenin). The hoods aren’t so sure, launching chases and double-crosses galore.

With phrases like “conspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake,” Overmyer’s dialogue wittily recalls the gritty lyricism of Raymond Chandler. Under Larry Biederman’s fast-paced direction, the capable cast (which includes Jeffrey Johnson, Christian Anderson, Sarah Sido and Shanti Reinhardt) generally acquit themselves well with the play’s challenging language and ambiguous characters.

However, standout performances by Selverstone and Mersault take the piece to another level. Selverstone’s Julia evokes a latter-day Lauren Bacall, sultry, steamy and sassy, while Mersault brings menacing intensity to Babcock and very different energy to his secondary role as a victimized used-car salesman.

While Overmyer eventually wraps up most of his story lines, his characters’ unrelenting amorality makes judging them impossible -- but then, who needs closure when ethical free-fall is this much fun?

-- Philip Brandes

“Dark Rapture,” Evidence Room, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Ends Oct. 30. $15 and $20. (213) 381-7118. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

*

The first lady; a top-secret rescue

Revolution is afoot in Silo City, Kan. Librarian Dody Dotson has enlisted sex worker Desiree Jones in a covert operation to rescue Laura Bush, whose Morse coded blinks for help have driven Dody to desperate measures. Mission accomplished, the trio retreats to Peter Pan’s underground treehouse -- hidden in the Heartland, imagine that. In the ensuing sorority sleepover, Bush reveals shocking secrets, Dody goes Alice B. Toklas-y, and Desiree passes out. Meanwhile, human projectiles for a new American century descend upon their shrub-marked hide-out.

That vegetative signpost provides the title of “Laura’s Bush,” playing late Friday nights at Sacred Fools, part of a nine-city national premiere. This grass-roots satire about delivering the first lady from imperial evil is a jaw-dropping dissident tract.

Credit this to the pseudonymous author, Jane Martin. The 1994 Pulitzer finalist (for “Keely and Du”) here turns her biting viewfinder on the national landscape, suggesting every Lorne Michaels sketch ever turned down by network censors.

The hilarious players are all going places. Shirley Anderson makes a sidesplitting misunderstood heroine, Simone de Beauvoir in Stepford guise. She, Gleason Bauer’s Dody and Rebecca O’Brien’s Desiree go for the comic jugular. Victor Isaac’s prior White House occupant and Kate London’s minstrel-show security advisor are audacity personified. Aldrich Allen follows up his sinister FBI duties in “Dubya 2004” to cap things off as a manic Cabinet maniac.

Director John Wuchte keeps everyone in this un-PC madness on the same uproarious page. Proponents of both political parties will be bilious; parody fans will know they’re not in Kansas anymore.

-- David C. Nichols

“Laura’s Bush,” Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Hollywood. 11 p.m. Fridays. Ends Oct. 15. $10. (310) 281-8337 or www.SacredFools.org. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

*

Humor trapped in a time warp

If satire is what closes on Saturday night, then Henry Fielding’s 18th century burlesques -- apparently trenchant enough in their time to make even Jonathan Swift bust a gut -- are way past their sell-by date.

Though it was his political lampoons that got him run off the stage (from which he turned, happily, to novel writing), Fielding got his biggest laughs at the expense of theatrical and literary icons of the day.

And if his politics seem remote to us, his aesthetic references are positively alien.

This is a problem for “The Author’s Thumb,” writer-director Dennis Gersten’s shotgun marriage of two Fielding spoofs, “The Author’s Farce” and “The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb, the Great.” Nearly every line of the latter is a sendup of works well known to Fielding’s contemporaries -- sniggering in-jokes that can mean little to anyone who hasn’t brushed up lately on his Spencer or Dryden.

That leaves Gersten’s eager but uneven cast to mug and mince about in period wigs and breeches as if there’s something very funny going on. The result often suggests Ed Wood doing a Restoration-comedy version of a fairy tale, particularly whenever the mop-top Tom Thumb (Blake Walker, on kneepads) and an Elvira-as-Valkyrie giantess (Noel Evangelisti, on platform shoes) are onstage.

The only consistently strong performer is the Bert Lahr-ish Jon Mullich, in two supporting roles. With his phlegmatic delivery and an uncanny ability to raise his eyebrows while squinting, Mullich somehow makes some theatrical sense of this strange brew. As for the rest -- well, I guess you had to be there.

-- Rob Kendt

“The Author’s Thumb,” Theatre Unlimited at T.U. Studios, 10943 Camarillo St., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. $15. (866) 811-4111. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

*

With Marines on Iraqi tour of duty

On Sept. 12, 2001, actor Sean Huze joined the U.S. Marine Corps in direct response to the events of the previous day. After graduating from San Diego boot camp training in January 2002, he received orders to 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion that June. On Feb. 6, 2003, Huze and company left Camp Lejeune for Kuwait, attached to 1st Marine Division at the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom

Their experiences provide both point and substance of “The Sand Storm,” at Gardner Stages. Although lean of means, this decalogue of monologues from the desert front has shocking force and awesome honesty.

The din of battle precedes an inchoate, bloodied Marine, who remains onstage as mute witness to the 10 fellows who follow in nuanced variant of attitude. For the next hour, their candid, uncensored and blistering solo observances alternate with projected personal photographs of undeniable veracity to construct a heart-clutching eyewitness mosaic.

Director Marlon Hoffman serves up experiential truth without editorializing, as first-time playwright Huze himself has so heroically done. Given the basement setup and the current state of arts funding, the technical effort is admirable.

And the able cast displays uncommon valor. To single out any is to slight them all, selflessly serving the soldiers whose voices they embody. If “The Sand Storm” seems beyond standard theatrical evaluation, it wholly merits continued expansion, and its 11-member corps surpasses the call of emotional duty.

-- D.C.N.

“The Sand Storm,” Gardner Stages, 1501 N. Gardner St., L.A. 7 and 9 p.m. today and next Friday; 8 p.m. Saturday and Oct. 9. Ends Oct. 9. $20. (310) 990-7336. Running time: 1 hour.

*

A dry wine of a romance

Mail-order brides sometimes arrive with postage due, as a salt-of-the-earth Italian immigrant learns to his sorrow in “The Most Happy Fella,” Frank Loesser’s bittersweet 1956 Broadway lullaby about a May-December romance. Actors Co-op’s modestly scaled season-opening revival hits the show’s emotional notes, though, unfortunately, not all its musical ones.

At its best, the show poignantly cuts through the protective layers of self-deception and wishful thinking to arrive at hidden emotional truths that connect people despite their outward differences. Those differences are especially huge in the case of middle-aged Tony (Scott Weintraub), a shy, unmarried 1920s Napa Valley vineyard owner, and his idolized Rosabella (Denise Scarms), a much younger down-at-heels waitress he once met on a trip to San Francisco.

Weintraub’s performance nails the genial humility that makes Tony sympathetic and heartbreaking in his long-distance pursuit of his beloved, even after he dupes her into marriage with a photo of studly farmhand Joey (Robert Standley). When he beams, his endearingly ethnically mangled grammar, “I don’t know why I’m-a so lucky fella” at the prospect of their new life together, we can feel sledgehammer of irony descend. In song, however, Weintraub lacks the range and wind for the role’s quasi-operatic ambitions.

Scarms’ superb singing voice gives the production its musical heft, along with Rosabella’s requisite vulnerability and pathos. Amid a dead-end life where “gettin’ took out is more like gettin’ took,” Scarms makes understandable and human the girl’s desperation in marrying her anonymous suitor as well as her disillusionment and one-night stand with Joey after learning the truth. While the role of Joey offers possibilities for complexity and conflict, Standley opts for a superficial agreeable lug. Secondary leads Maria Lay and Matt Lutz are serviceable.

Director Gary Leeds’ struggle to squeeze a big show onto the venue’s intimate stage meets with only partial success. The nicely detailed rustic set clashes with a cartoonish painted vineyard backdrop. Dual piano orchestration accompanies a constrained chorus that barely avoid collisions in the ensemble numbers. Still, it’s a respectable effort that charms at times.

-- P.B.

“The Most Happy Fella,” Crossley Terrace Theatre, 1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 14. $27. (323) 462-8460. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

*

The conspiracies are boiling over

Early in “Liberty Injustice” at the Lex, a character announces that we are watching “agitprop.” That’s a fancy label for this unsavory blend of melodrama, polemic and conspiracy theory as overblown as it is underdeveloped.

The play’s main plot concerns Ellen Dahlstrom (Tony nominee Jonelle Allen, wasted here), a fiery liberal attorney at odds with the “establishment.” When Ellen agrees to defend a suspected terrorist, she winds up in jail -- only the beginning of her travails.

That’s the gist, but playwright W. Colin McKay and director Anthony Barnao are actually out to Bush-bash with a vengeance. At intervals, a jovial “Greeter” (Adam Kaiz), a sort of propagandistic jester, bounces out to address the audience, citing dire statistics that cast Bush et al. in a decidedly nasty light. To lend to the atmosphere of theater verite, audience plants -- a Vietnam vet, a die-hard Republican, etc. -- deliver impassioned opinions.

Barnao’s histrionic staging emphasizes rather than downplays the material’s lurid nature. The actors, perhaps smelling a flop, tend to overcompensate.

Maybe McKay simply wanted to rally support for John Kerry before election day. Whatever his intentions, he ludicrously overstates his case. Insinuations that Bush somehow colluded in several murders seem fear-mongering of the most abject nature.

Whether you’re a committed conservative or a die-hard liberal, you are likely to be put off not only by the play’s unreasoning zealotry but by its turgid presentation.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Liberty Injustice,” Lex Theatre, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Oct. 31. $15. (323) 957-5782. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.