Dazzling ‘Crumble’ is stalwartly screwy

The first clue that Sheila Callaghan’s “Crumble (Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake)” is onto something new arrives after riding our elevator from the EdgeFest-pummeled Los Angeles Theatre Center lobby to Theater 5. Inside, Shannon Kennedy’s skeletal domestic setting is, even by Moving Arts standards, acutely oddball.

Then “Crumble” begins, with thematic tableaux of Richard Foreman proportions. Downstage, Stephen Kline writhes in ragtag Home Depot-textured garb (courtesy of costumer Marjorie Baer), and it’s official: This whimsically eloquent view of a widow, her daughter and their anthropomorphic apartment, all bereft and bonkers, is a potent example of postmodern narrative invention.

Meet hilariously profane 11-year-old Janice (the amazing Lily Holleman). Last Christmas, Janice and Mother (Amy Thiel, beyond praise) could communicate, while Father (Jeffrey Johnson) kept the Apartment (actor Kline) repaired. Now, Mother is a hyperventilating basket case, Janice grows ever scarier, and each retreats to fantasy Father figures. Mother’s sister, childless Barbara (Evie Hammer), prefers her army of felines. In the absence of healing, the neglected Apartment grows increasingly destructive. Ionesco never blended absurdity, terror and sentiment more strikingly.

Director Larry Biederman and the designers have an aerated ball with this sweetly audacious parable, especially Chris Wojcieszyn’s mega-lighting and Jonathan Snipe’s omni-sound. The cast is smashing. Kline plays incorporeal with abandon against Holleman and Thiel’s seamless tag team, and Hammer and Johnson are excellent.

Certainly, innovative wordplay is currently blessing L.A. Tom Jacobson’s dazzling “Bunbury” and David Greenspan’s festive “She Stoops to Comedy” extend dramatic principles from the inside out. David Mamet’s riotous “Romance” ravages political correctness from the outside in. If, amid such bounty, “Crumble” seems very special, that’s because, being Callaghan’s breakthrough work, it is.

-- David C. Nichols

“Crumble (Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake),” Moving Arts at Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., L.A. 7:15 p.m. Fridays through Sundays, through Oct. 23. Starting Oct. 28, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 6. Mature audiences. $15. (866) 811-4111 or www.theatermania.com; www.edgefest.org. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

*

Close encounters of the human kind

Six lives out of whack, three painful encounters driven by desperate need. Urgency infuses Lucid by Proxy theater company’s production of “Asymmetry,” as seeming common ground becomes battleground when three couples, two newly met, one long estranged, struggle to connect and redeem their damaged lives.

In Rick Robinson’s uneven but forceful new 21st century gothic, created for EdgeFest, the action overlaps on James Paul Xavier’s stark apartment set with three free-standing doors. The couples, unaware of each other and separated by time and place, come and go.

In a choreography of exits and entrances, smoothly directed by Robinson, they meet, motivated variously by sex, revenge and a need for affirmation.

Most likable is Julius (Alan Loayza), who’s seeing his longtime online poker buddy Priscilla (Shannon Nelson) for the first time. Priscilla’s heavily scarred face and neurotic defensiveness come as a shock to Julius, who bears hidden scars of his own. Thanks to Loayza’s well-defined geeky sweetness, this setup also works as the play’s only humorous leavening.

Miguel (Alex Fernandez), a dying, broken poet, hungers to reclaim his past self through the eyes of former student and once-worshipful lover Sandy (Melody Doyle), unaware that her life has been shaped by his betrayal.

Meanwhile, a no-strings-attached sexual encounter between bitter Maggie and still-hopeful Cody (Keaton Talmadge and David Nett), who share a disease and its attendant sense of shame, turns into a near-violent confrontation.

Each encounter comes with layers of pain and new lacerations of the heart, but at least in one case, with the possibility of healing -- and balance.

Is it overwritten and a trifle overheated? Yes. But the play’s emotional core is compelling and so, too, is the fearless creative grab of this vigorous company.

-- Lynne Heffley

“Asymmetry,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., L.A. 3:15 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; ends Oct. 23. $12. (866) 811-4111. www.lucidbyproxy.com; www.edgefest.org. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

*

Michael Schlitt’s ‘Incredible’ tale

A founding member of the Actors’ Gang, Michael Schlitt has been plying his craft on the local small theater scene for some time now, and he has his share of things to say about the rewards and drawbacks of serving the theatrical muse in Tinseltown.

Certainly, any theater person worth his or her salt has compiled a list of stage anecdotes, from towering triumphs to abject disasters. In “Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure,” Schlitt attempts to parlay a genuinely eccentric incident in his past into a full-scale solo show.

The crux of Schlitt’s show concerns a four-city tour of India that Schlitt took in 1999 as the director of the Neil Simon musical “They’re Playing Our Song.” At a crossroads in his life and career, Schlitt mastered his abhorrence of Simon’s work and sallied off to the Indian subcontinent with a small but intrepid band of performers in tow.

Schlitt also enlisted the services of a cameraman during the tour. However, as he explains in the play, Schlitt was never able to master the resulting mass of film footage into a cohesive documentary.

Schlitt still hasn’t managed to shape his material into a compelling narrative. As far as bizarre escapades go, his story certainly holds epic anecdotal possibilities. Yet Schlitt’s intellectual dryness is sadly at odds with his piece’s comic potential. Worse, Schlitt remains on book for much of the performance, further hampering Nancy Keystone’s already static staging.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Mike’s Incredible Indian Adventure,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles. 9:15 p.m. Fridays-Sundays. Ends Oct. 23. $15. (866) 811-4111. www.theatermania.com; www.edgefest.org. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

*

‘Ripper’ disturbs, yet lacks drama

“I told you I was hard-core.” That recurring statement underscores “Ripper’s Last Log.” This eerie, chat room-culled look at 21-year-old Brandon Vedas’ final webcam drug banquet will make one think twice about Internet confabs, not to mention mass quantities of narcotics and 151-proof rum.

The late Vedas, who signed on as persona “Ripper” at irc.shroomery.org on Jan. 12, 2003, has entered urban legend. Adaptor-director Rory C. Mitchell aims higher, to confront a society in which Vedas could die while an entire online community looked on.

Increasingly comatose Ripper (Weston Pew) hovers above his peers on the giant computer chair that centers set designer Colin Day’s rows of mismatched seating. Disbelieving chatters, with handles like Phalaris (Kate Berton), Grphish (Bob Kundrat), Smoke2K (Nicholas Di Nardo), and so on, deliver their reactions out front, from sardonic to traumatized. PNUTBOT (Erin Shaver), the response program that helped keep Ripper’s audience from intervening, emits blank-eyed faux-perkiness.

One admires Mitchell’s intent. His resourceful staging has painful point, and lighting designer Susan Adele Havens keeps things surreal. So does the entire feral cast, though Sarah Connolly’s glitter-caped Spiritual Nexus is more odd than unsettling.

For a cautionary transcript does not a play make, given “Ripper’s” foregone conclusion, indistinct characters and dependence on pharmaceutical tallies and Internet lingo. LATC’s oversized Theater 3 is problematic, its steep contours diffusing intensity.

“Ripper’s Last Log” has merit, but its stark purpose is not automatically drama.

-- D.C.N.

“Ripper’s Last Log,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., L.A. Mature audiences. 3:15 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Ends Oct. 23. $16; $8 w/festival passports. (866) 811-4111 www.theatermania.com; www.edgefest.org. Running time: 45 minutes.