A testy family reunion

When Kurt Vonnegut wrote his first play, “Happy Birthday, Wanda June,” in 1970, America was embroiled in a nation-polarizing war. Deja vu haunts the plush Actors’ Gang revival of Vonnegut’s idiosyncratic riff on Odysseus, a “simple-minded play about men who enjoy killing.”

The title refers to an adolescent ice-cream truck casualty (Sienna McCandless), but “Wanda June” turns on misogynist poster boy Harold Ryan (William Russ). Believed lost while scoring diamonds in Vietnam, this would-be Hemingway returns after eight years to his taxidermy-ridden homestead (splendidly realized by designer Sibyl Wickersheimer as surreal zoo habitat). Accompanying Ryan is tormented Nagasaki bomber Col. Looseleaf Harper (the subtle Eric Cadora).

Ryan’s wife, Penelope (Leah Harrison), his son, Paul (J.R. Dziengel), and Penelope’s suitors, vacuum-cleaner huckster Herb (Andrew Cohen) and peacenik physician Norbert (David Wilcox), are stunned, wary, worshipful and apoplectic, respectively.

Their direct-address entanglements wield Vonnegut’s social comment, accented by monologues from shuffleboard players in the afterlife. These include fastidious Nazi major Siegfried Von Konigswald (Chris Schultze, a find) and Ryan’s ex-wife Mildred (Robin Karfo, a hoot).

Although director Greg Reiner sometimes lets pacing unravel, he gets the sarcastic idiom, with winning assets in his cast and designers. Tony Mulanix (lighting), Ann Closs-Farley (costumes) and Gabe Lopez (sound) supply detailed wit, and the actors play their stylized attitudes with panache.

The antiwar aspects have aged better than the period humor, which even with updates and still-offensive racial slurs isn’t exactly shocking. Still, “Wanda June” has always been more crazed cartoon than finished play, and Vonnegut fans should be satisfied.

-- David C. Nichols

“Happy Birthday, Wanda June,” Actors’ Gang Theatre, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Dec. 4. Mature audiences. $25. (323) 465-0566, Ext. 15, or www.theactorsgang.com. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Blurred messages on ‘Postcards’

Big Jane can’t hold a job or a relationship. Little Jane’s husband is an alcoholic and her 5-year-old is a biter. K.C.’s mother just died. But everything’s OK. No, really, everything’s fine. Let’s have a drink. I’ll have the veal. You have the duck. Isn’t the restaurant nice and where did our dreams go?

In “Three Postcards,” by Craig Lucas and composer Craig Carnelia, three women at a Manhattan eatery reveal their unfulfilled lives through elliptical chitchat, fantasy sequences, flashbacks and fast-forwards.

Seventeen years after the play’s rhapsodically received premiere at South Coast Repertory, this free-form construction no longer surprises, but pulling it off well is still not easy.

Theatre 40’s subdued staging, directed by Steven Williams, gets some of it right.

Lucas’ wit and compassion are alive in Amy Tolsky’s dominant Little Jane, Emily Chase’s grieving K.C. and Maria Spassoff’s floundering Big Jane. It would be interesting to see an edgier Waiter from the otherwise fine David Cheaney. David Bickford’s actorly presence is marginal, but his skill as a pianist is a notable asset.

The songs -- not particularly memorable, but necessary -- are where the production stumbles. Much of the trio’s stories is told musically, and although Chase offers an affecting rendition of the show’s poignant, pull-out solo, “The Picture in the Hall,” actors and sound design both are unable to put over the three-part musical soliloquies. (Ellen Monocroussos meets the challenges of lights and sound with mixed results.)

Jeff G. Rack’s elegant period set for the company’s production of Somerset Maugham’s “The Constant Wife” doubles nicely as an upscale restaurant -- this isn’t the wildly trendy eatery of “Postcards’ ” early incarnations. Joshua Finkel’s functional choreography enables the actors to make smooth returns to their real-world positions at the table.

-- Lynne Heffley

“Three Postcards,” Theatre 40, Reuben Cordova Theatre, Beverly Hills High School campus, 241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. 8 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 10. $18 and $20. (310) 364-0535. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Another tour of duty for ‘Catch-22’

The U.S. Army Reserve soldiers who refused a delivery mission in Iraq last week might have been channeling the spirit of Capt. Yossarian, the skeptical bombardier of Joseph Heller’s classic 1961 novel “Catch-22.”

Like those present-day reservists, the fictional Yossarian keeps getting his WWII tour of duty extended by commanders without an apparent exit plan, which begins to convince him that anyone who might get him killed -- including superiors who send him on dangerous missions -- is his mortal enemy.

Though scarcely as rattling as it was in its day, this subversive atheist-in-a-foxhole spirit survives in a new production of Heller’s own stage version of “Catch-22” at West Coast Ensemble. On Evan A. Bartoletti’s evocative set -- modular asylum curtains made of repurposed parachutes -- director Claudia Jaffee’s spry, versatile cast ranges fleetly and convincingly, keeping up a kvetchy, rapid-fire drumbeat of mounting absurdity largely missing from Mike Nichols’ bloated 1970 film.

Yossarian is played by the engaging Robert Gantzos, who evokes Jimmy Stewart by way of Kafka, his haunted eyes belying his strapping physique. Also standing out are John Marzilli, as a contrasting pair of clay-footed authority figures -- timorous Major Major and lip-smackingly corrupt Col. Cathcart -- and Gary Cearlock as a tender chaplain and an oblivious shrink.

Michael Spellman, James Sharpe, Matt J. Popham and Adam Silverstein score droll comic points in a variety of roles, with Madelynn Fattibene and Larisa Miller giving dimension to assorted female roles.

Though the production noticeably strains, particularly in its second half, to keep up with Heller’s overpopulated adaptation, there’s heft and bite in its timeless portrait of a man at war with war.

-- Rob Kendt

“Catch-22,” West Coast Ensemble, 522 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 21. $22. (323) 525-0022. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Relationships as dicey real estate

“Atmosphere” is one selling point of the cozy London home at the center of politely tense negotiations in Martin Crimp’s “Dealing With Clair.”

Atmosphere is also a key element in the play’s nuanced suspense -- the unspoken desires and resentments in the air as a cool young real estate agent, Clair (Abigail Brammell), handles the sale between a bickering couple (Jay Karnes and Rachel Robinson on the night reviewed) and a weirdly charming businessman, James (Morlan Higgins on the night reviewed; the show is double-cast except for Brammell).

Clair is compelled to represent each party to the other in ways that are unavoidably intimate, emotionally taxing and borderline creepy. The key word is “borderline”: Storm clouds that gather around Crimp’s characters never quite burst.

The Matrix Theatre’s U.S. premiere production artfully skims along the play’s implacable surface while subtexts roil below.

Director Andrew J. Robinson, who’s mounted expert Matrix productions of Pinter and Beckett, mines every exchange for maximum transactional value: the way the husband unconsciously condescends to, and comes on to, his child’s Italian nanny (Abigail Revasch), or the way James draws out the reserved Clair, for personal reasons that are never clear.

If there’s a drawback in Robinson’s approach, it’s that some subtleties are italicized too broadly, particularly between the self-involved marrieds. Their escalating contention, which is more demonstrative than seems entirely English, tends to overwhelm the play’s central enigma: the deceptively brisk, businesslike Clair.

The muted tones of Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’s set and Dan Weingarten’s lights situate the property on the edge between comfortable seclusion and spooky isolation.

If we’re more unsettled than satisfied by the play’s icy denouement, that is surely as Crimp intended. We can be haunted more, in the end, by what’s unsaid and unseen.

-- R.K.

“Dealing With Clair,” Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. Performances resume Oct. 30, in repertory with “Bold Girls.” 8 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays, 8 p.m. Mondays. Ends Dec. 19. $20. (323) 852-1445. Running time: 2 hours.