Courage in a time of terror

Three decades ago, award-winning playwright and director Emily Mann set out to record a relative’s personal reminiscences of the Holocaust. In the case of her own kinswoman, language proved an insurmountable barrier, but Mann discovered the eloquent spokesperson she had been seeking in Annulla Allen, the close relative of a friend. With tape recorder in hand, Mann interviewed Annulla about her experiences as a Jew living under the shadow of the Nazis.

Mann’s oral history “Annulla,” being given its West Coast premiere at the Eclectic Company Theatre, plays like a transcript of those decades-old recordings. Mann herself appears as a character, although her function is subsidiary to Annulla’s flowing and at times scattered narrative.

Set in 1974 London, the action unfolds in Annulla’s modest kitchen -- splendidly realized in Jeff G. Rack’s detailed set. Call this a meta-memory play, a reminiscence within a reminiscence in which Mann (thoughtful Amy Benedict), addressing us in the present day, looks on her mid-’70s meetings with Annulla (Eileen De Felitta), who, in turn, reflects on her past. Passing as Aryan, Annulla lived among the Nazis, even finagling her husband’s release from Dachau.

Under the direction of Judy Welden, the play proves a tour de force for De Felitta, who captures the ebullience of her eponymous character in a whirlwind performance that never flags. Speaking directly to the audience, Annulla makes soup, brews tea and chatters nonstop -- particularly about her own play, a feminist treatise she feels holds the answer to the world’s ills. Dramaturgically speaking, the chatter seems sometimes raw and unsynthesized, an unstructured sampling from the audio record. Despite that, Annulla remains a charming raconteuse, indomitable and appealing.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Annulla,” Eclectic Company Theatre, 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. $15 and $18. Ends Feb. 26. (818) 508-3003. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

*

‘Noble Gases’ and lesser fumes

Harsh, dude -- that’s how Adam Rapp’s long one-act “Finer Noble Gases” feels. In its L.A. premiere at Sacred Fools in director Aaron Francis’ well-realized production, it’s a play that gets a light buzz going with the slacker comedy of two stoned couch potatoes, Staples (Ed Goodman) and Chase (Scott Thewes), musing aimlessly about robots, aliens and drugs, then despairing over the casual destruction of their TV by a mildly unhinged roommate, Lynch (Joe Jordan).

With the perfectly foggy logic of the chemically stupefied, Staples and Chase -- who also ostensibly play in a band whose name they can’t quite remember -- decide to pinch the television of a meek neighbor (Brandon Clark), whose eagerness for connection is first touching, then a little scary.

This all plays out with flawlessly modulated deadpan on a set, by Matt Scarpino and director Francis, that spares no disgusting detail in its convincing bachelor-pad scumminess. A wired Thewes and the geeky Clark are particularly fine in their first scene of cross-purposed neighborly small talk, on which pivots the play’s sharp turn from light stoner comedy to something darker.

It’s a buzz-kill without a punch line or a point, though. Rock ‘n’ roll theater, like good rock ‘n’ roll, should be short, fierce and unaccountable. But Rapp, like other playwrights in this genre -- Eric Bogosian, Bridget Carpenter -- feels the need to reach for significance, pathos, metaphor. With lives as bleak and messy as these, though, we don’t need the extra coda to catch the tune.

-- Rob Kendt

“Finer Noble Gases,” Sacred Fools Theatre, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays, 10 p.m. Fridays through Saturdays. Ends Feb. 19. $15. (310) 281-8337 or www.sacredfools.org. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

*

‘Gaveston’ joins hands for equality

For a show with his name in the title, we learn little about Gaveston from “Gaveston, Favourite of the King,” an ungainly new chamber opera about Edward II, England’s legendary “gay” monarch, immortalized in Christopher Marlowe’s play and Derek Jarman’s film.

But then, this Gaveston (Charles Alan) is less a character than Edward’s (Beau Puckett) precocious queer conscience, challenging this insufficiently “out” public figure to name “what century” they might embrace openly. Lest we miss the point, Gaveston concludes: “No century will let us live side by side.”

Director Derek Charles Livingston wants to bring this point home by setting the action in modern dress. But rather than highlight the struggle of same-sex couples for basic civil rights, this choice only makes us wonder what might happen to a contemporary world leader who paraded with a lover of any gender, to whom he’d deeded large, contested swaths of land.

The modern setting also presents us with such unfortunate spectacles as a battle consisting of an ensemble in fatigues stomping around the tiny space and facing off in close range with toy machine guns.

Christopher Winslow’s ambitious score for piano, violin and cello has some unexpectedly hummable anthems amid its Britten-esque noodling, and Ken Prestininzi’s libretto likewise manages a few evocative dialogues and images amid a legion of cliches about “what happens to a man when he loves.”

Among a gamely earnest cast, Blanche Ramirez delivers some rich arias as a beatific nun, and Jack Harding deliciously overplays the conflicted heavy, Lord Mortimer. Still, it’s a bad sign for an opera when its best scene is a disarmingly sincere prayer montage that’s spoken, not sung.

-- R.K.

“Gaveston, Favourite of the King,” Celebration Theatre, 7051B Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Feb. 20. $25. (323) 957-1884 or www.celebrationtheatre.com. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

*

‘Mother Courage’: A new sales region

Anger and passionate protest are unmistakable in the Sons of Beckett Theatre Company’s decision to reset Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage” in present-day Iraq. Some resonant contemporary parallels notwithstanding, however, the conceit undermines rather than strengthens Brecht’s biting allegory about war profiteering.

When he wrote the piece in 1939, Brecht could easily have used the global conflict raging around him as a backdrop but chose instead the Thirty Years’ War of the early 1600s, with its unbroken generations of bloodshed between German Protestants against Catholics.

Here, Jeffrey Wienckowski’s staging frames the current U.S. occupation of Iraq as an analogous religious conflict. While the result is appropriately edgy and menacing in its depiction of the horror and absurdity of war, it loses the context of internal strife within a homogenous population, as well as the sense of warfare raging without end.

Brecht’s central theme is the way in which killing over time becomes institutionalized and woven into the economic fabric. His savage indictment of wartime capitalism is embodied in our “heroine,” Mother Courage (played with suitable greed and heartlessness by Lee Anne Moore), who operates a profitable supply wagon throughout the battle zone. Her prosperity comes at a heavy price: the sacrifice of her three children (David DeLeon, Colin Willkie, Erin McBride Africa), who respectively represent bravery, honesty and compassion. The moral failures of Mother Courage at each loss chronicle the systematic stripping away of humanity.

Sustaining the Iraq associations proves a stretch, at times requiring the labored use of video displays to translate elements of the original text (Germany=Iraq, Poland=Afghanistan, salt=oil, Kaiser=Saddam, etc.). Mistaking Brecht’s signature goal of emotional detachment for a ban on subtlety, the performances lurch awkwardly between flat delivery and over-the-top shouting. Rendering “The Great Capitulation” and other songs as rap numbers is a nice idea, but it doesn’t compensate for lack of singing ability. The gap between concept and execution is consistently apparent throughout.

-- Philip Brandes

“Mother Courage,” Theatre/Theater, 6425 Hollywood Blvd., fourth floor, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Feb. 5. $15. (323) 465-3136 or www.sobtheatre.com. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

*

Decorate interiors, the enigma ‘Said’

Combine inscrutable text with side lighting and stark white furniture, and the stage is set for European intellectual chic circa 1969, courtesy of an atmospheric adaptation of Margaret Duras’ obscure novella “Destroy She Said” at Theatre/Theater.

Even by the opaque standards of Duras’ better-known works (“The Lover,” “Last Year at Marienbad”), “Destroy” proves a real head-scratcher as it traces a three-week sojourn at an upscale sanitarium in a remote forest. Relationships that unfold among four patients at the hotel-hospital are charged with suggestiveness that never achieve significance, despite the committed efforts of director Matthew Wilder and his young cast.

The shellshocked neurosis of Elizabeth Alione (Amanda Decker), a beautiful, enigmatic woman (are there any other kind in these stories?), is irresistibly alluring to two men. Stein (Walter Murray) is an aspiring writer going nowhere, while Max Thor (Ryan Higgins) teaches “History of the Future” to sleeping students. The arrival of Thor’s wife, Alissa (Zoe Canner), and Elizabeth’s husband (Terry Tokentines) complicates the edgy sexual vectors underlying superficial lunches, tennis and sunbathing. Mira Lew’s narration captures the blank staccato of Duras’ short sentences and surface details.

Wilder’s staging reflects a disorienting disregard for textual details (Decker is blond, though Elizabeth is described in the narration as dark-haired; comparing their mirror reflections, Alissa tells Elizabeth, “We’re the same height” -- even though Decker stands a head taller.

Central to Duras’ writing is the vast distance separating mundane existence from rich interior reality, but the distinction often eludes performances whose blankness evokes tedium rather than mystery. “I take too many medications to be bored,” Elizabeth claims at one point. Pass that bottle of pills, please.

-- P.B.

“Destroy She Said,” Theatre/Theater, 6425 Hollywood Blvd., fourth floor, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. Ends Feb. 13. $15. (310) 382-0710. Running time: 1 hours, 40 minutes.

*

Wrong turns on trip through ‘D.C.’

Oof. It’s hard to explain why bad plays happen to good audiences. It’s just one of those recurring freaks of artistic endeavor.

“Lysistrata, D.C.,” part of the late-night Adler After Dark series at the Stella Adler, is a case in point: a construction of mind-boggling ineptitude in every particular.

Set in present-day Washington, D.C., this musical adaptation of Aristophanes’ famous comedy about women who withhold sex to end a war features a book by Joanna Bloem, songs by Bloem, Dan Marcus, Alan O’Day and Sally Klein, choreography by Michael Menna, musical direction by Marcus and Larry Evans, and direction by Devon M. Schwartz. At no point does any of their efforts approach a professional standard. However, the most obviously amateurish element of the show is the acting.

Bloem plays Lysistrata in the most wooden turn of the evening, although the other performers rival her in general inadequacy. All are obdurately off-key, few can dance a lick, and despite all the nudge-nudge, wink-wink wannabe naughtiness, there’s not a spark of genuine sexual chemistry to be found in this mix. The pre-show performance by the musical duo Bright Blue Gorilla is genuinely wry and entertaining. Would that it were a harbinger of things to come.

-- F.K.F.

“Lysistrata, D.C.,” Stella Adler Theatre, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Ends Feb. 5. $10. (323) 828-5824. Running time: 1 hour.