‘Haywire!’ Murders in the big top

There’s something sad yet brave about those late-career pictures that Joan Crawford made as she soldiered on, acting up a storm in jaw-droppingly awful material. Remember “Berserk!” -- in which she played the owner of a circus beset by a series of spectacular deaths? Or “Strait-Jacket,” in which she portrayed a woman sent to an asylum for the ax murders of her husband and his mistress?

The plots of those movies fuse together in “Haywire!” -- a goofy but inventive fever dream of a play by Tim Wilkins and Kevin Remington, presented at Art/Works Theatre in Hollywood.

In wig and makeup that evoke the sixtysomething Crawford, Wilkins portrays circus proprietress and ringmistress Miranda Towers. Fifteen years after murdering her husband and the high-wire hottie with whom he was philandering, a mysteriously freed Miranda catches up with her bedraggled troupe along the Texas-Mexico border. Desperately vivacious, she reclaims the spotlight. But with her return, death once again stalks the big top.

The murders are humorously depicted through an illusion that puts actors’ heads atop puppet bodies (by Robert Miller), which get axed, crushed by a safe, cut in half by a buzz saw, and so on.

The circus performers, overseen by mannish yet motherly Canteen Annie (Suzanne Voss), display a dizzying array of sexual orientations. But what, exactly, is the bond between the Boris-and-Natasha-like pair (Andrew Ableson and Kimberly Lewis) who’ve taken control of the circus? And who will prevail -- Miranda or her kittenish daughter (Corinne Dekker) -- in securing the affections of the hunky new wire walker (Michael Bronte)?

These and other questions are answered amid the skewed perspectives of Robert Bingham’s circus-lot set.

The production, directed by Remington, is too big for its small stage. But bigger still is the script, which -- at more than two hours -- is much too long. Parody can be sustained for only so long. It’s best to take your bows when you’re still on top.

--Daryl H. Miller

“Haywire!” Art/Works Theatre, 6569 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. No performance Thanksgiving Day. Ends Dec. 4. $20. (323) 960-7744 or www.plays411.com/haywire. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

*

‘The Battle: ABC’ artful yet opaque

Heiner Muller was just 4 in 1933 when his father, a minor official in the German Marxist Social Democratic Party, was arrested by the Nazi SS and sent to a concentration camp, where he remained for a year. After the war, Muller found himself in the German Democratic Republic, otherwise known as East Germany. Though indoctrinated in socialism early on, he recognized its repressive potential and once stated: “I know democracy only as a tourist; dictatorship is my corporeal experience.”

Muller’s writing for the stage and elsewhere, until his death in 1995, reflected what he’d experienced of war, social upheaval, lock-step thinking and the crush of history -- all of which courses through “The Battle” and “ABC,” which have been conjoined for a presentation by City Garage in Santa Monica. As compiled and directed by Frederique Michel and designed by Charles A. Duncombe, the production is artful and provocative, but the chilly formality of the text and the icy beauty of the images tend to freeze out the audience -- rendering the material at once eerily familiar and frustratingly opaque.

Autobiographical snippets are interspersed among scenes from German life in this translation by Marc von Henning, performed by an all-purpose cast (Justin Davanzo, David E. Frank, Sharon Gardner and Bo Roberts) that includes one player designated as Muller’s stand-in (Paul Rubenstein). All are dressed in black as they move through a Magritte-like landscape of doors, windows and rooms that appear to float in space.

Traditional notions of love, family and duty get warped as “a terror of the soul” seizes the populace, transforming everything into paranoia, hypocrisy and bravado. The haggard, hunched citizens appear beaten and weighed down. The sound of marching feet disturbs the air.

“Shall I tell you how a man is turned into a dog?” one man asks. The question hangs in the air, for anyone who will listen.

-- D.H.M.

“The Battle: ABC,” City Garage, 1340 1/2 4th St. (alley between Third Street Promenade and 4th Street), Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 5:30 p.m. Sundays. No performances Thanksgiving weekend. Ends Dec. 18; reopens Jan. 13-29. $20; Sundays pay what you can. (310) 319-9939 or www.citygarage.org. Running time: 1 hour.

*

Privilege and class in ‘Anteroom’

Late in the hyper-enervated action of “Anteroom” at 2100 Square Feet, one of its daft career climbers poses a whopper: “Why should anything be?” Good question -- the late Harry Kondoleon’s 1985 satire of class warfare amid the Long Island elite expends more gloss on the subject of America’s fascination with privilege than perhaps the topic can presently bear.

Mind you, author Kondoleon’s outre talent announces itself. “Anteroom,” which premiered at Playwrights’ Horizons in New York, conveys this cleverly mannered stylist’s voice -- Noel Coward meets Joe Orton in John Guare terrain -- at its apogee.

The black comic plot follows Parker (Mathew Vipond), a flamboyant, celebrity-obsessed scion of Southampton who seeks social security via a devious plan. It involves his strapped friend, Wilson (Matty Ferraro), Parker’s Gstaad-bound father, Craig (Jan Munroe), and pill-popping grande dame Fay Leland (Irene Roseen), who owns the manor to which the title location is attached. Warped complications come from Fay’s deadpan maid (Annemette Andersen), Craig’s mistress (Rachael L. Hollingsworth) and Wilson’s lower-class mother (Von Rae Wood).

What’s best about “Anteroom” is director Larry McCallister’s smooth staging, with Mia Torres’ functional tiled set a perfect nuthouse for the pixilated actors. Like Roseen, whose foghorn attack suggests “Auntie Mame’s” Gloria Upson matured into Gloria Swanson. Munroe channels Gene Kelly as patrician loon in Nolina Burge’s fine costumes, and his colleagues have their moments.

Alas, Vipond’s key schemer isn’t among them, his wildly overblown turn ungrounded in comic point. Moreover, for all Kondoleon’s skill at arch brutality, his text already feels passe. That surely says more about post-millennial angst than it does about “Anteroom,” but it doesn’t make this game outing outrageous.

-- David C. Nichols

“Anteroom,” 2100 Square Feet Theater, 5615 San Vicente Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Dec. 18. $20. (323) 969-4889. Running time: 2 hours.

*

Where souls are ‘Between Worlds’

A woman, angelic in a white ball gown, and her partner, in a flowing white coat, are in the midst of a ballroom spin when elevator doors open to reveal a man in his early 30s, looking confused. “Where am I?” he asks.

If he would look more closely at his surroundings, perhaps he’d understand. He’s in a sort of waiting room with a heavenly skylight overhead and a see-through floor affording a view of the Earth below.

This way station between life and the afterlife -- where souls await the fate of their comatose or badly injured bodies back on Earth -- is envisioned by French-born, Brussels-based playwright Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt in his 1999 play “Between Worlds,” being presented by California Repertory Company in Long Beach.

A onetime lecturer in philosophy, Schmitt is also author of the play “Enigma Variations” and the novel-turned-movie “Monsieur Ibrahim.” Unfortunately, his spiritual-philosophical musings here turn treacly and obvious.

Gavin Hawk, portraying the young man, gives a nicely nuanced performance as a self-centered, hard-shelled type who secretly yearns to be less so, with similarly compelling performances turned in by Sarah Goldblatt as the diaphanous young woman who may prove to be his salvation, Gary Grossman as a good-natured teddy bear of a guy, Marjo-Riikka Makela as a hardscrabble cleaning woman with a poetic nature and Shaunte Caraballo as the tough-talking but empathetic caseworker in charge of them all.

Sha Newman, known for her artful work as a choreographer as well as a director, keeps the action flowing almost like a dance through the otherworldly set (by David Jacques), lighted in deep, dreamy colors by Leroy Meadows.

The script, translated by John Clifford, appears to have inspired everyone involved, but its influence on the rest of us will depend on our tolerance for what comes across like Sartre as filtered through “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” for presentation on the Hallmark Channel.

-- D.H.M.

“Between Worlds,” Edison Theatre, 213 E. Broadway, Long Beach. 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. No performances Thanksgiving week. Ends Dec. 10. $20. (562) 985-5526 or www.calrep.org. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.