‘Fair Maid’ is aged but frolicsome

A hearty crew of players and designers take on 17th century English pulp in “The Fair Maid of the West, Parts I & II.” This Furious Theatre Company assault on Thomas Heywood’s antique saga of a barmaid-turned-swashbuckler works best as tongue-in-cheek trinket.

The prolific Heywood wrote Part 1 around 1600, Part 2 in 1630. The gap between Elizabethan and Jacobean tastes compels adaptors James C. Leary and Damaso Rodriguez (who also directs). Their version of this bodice-ripper about beautiful Bess Bridges (valiant Vonessa Martin) merges B-movie serial and Joan Littlewood romp. Direct address and projected titles keep kitsch high. Indeed, the florid swordplay (courtesy of Tim Weske) and word pointing is sharper than Heywood’s barnburner.

Mistakenly believing her beloved Mr. Spencer (Shawn Lee) dead, impossibly virtuous Bess hits the seas in male drag, along with crony Clem (Katie Davies), marble-mouthed Capt. Goodlack (Leary) and posh Mr. Ruffman (Eric Pargac). After outwitting various scurvy knaves (often played by Doug Newell), Bess and Spencer reunite at the island court of the Pirate King (Richard Hilton) and Queen (Kristy Nolen), where more intrigue awaits.

Director Rodriguez sends his frisky ensemble cascading over Melissa Teoh’s setting of bleached wood and rigging ropes. Rachel Canning’s cunning costumes, Doug Newell’s loopy sound cues and Christie Wright’s airy lights are assets.

Less so, the overlong text, which sails through Part 1, almost drowns in Part 2. Nor are all dialects as purposely obscure as Leary’s tickling brogue. “Fair Maid” is lighthearted fun, but it needs some barnacles scraped off its hull.

-- David C. Nichols

“The Fair Maid of the West, Parts I & II,” Balcony Theatre Upstairs at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 12. $10-$24. (626) 356-7529 or www.furioustheatre.org. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

*

The weird world of Edward Gorey

Unearthly creatures slithering through spooky houses, opera singers poisoned with aspic, ghoulish libertines pawing through encyclopedias of unimaginable customs, children sacrificed to insect gods and, of course, an abundance of burial urns. Happy Halloween, and welcome to “Gorey Stories,” an anthology of morbid tales, songs and limericks from the deliciously unwholesome gray-hued universe of the late master illustrator-author Edward Gorey, adapted for the stage in 1978 by Stephen Currens

Gorey’s art is best known from the opening animation still used on PBS’ “Mystery!” series. This spirited revival at Sacred Fools Theatre brings Gorey’s distinctively styled brand of neo-Victorian Goth to -- for want of a better term -- life, with superb atmospheric staging and unfailingly on-target performances.

The highly athletic ensemble, suitably attired in Ann Cross-Farley’s cadaverous makeup and costumes, comprises an imperious hostess (Kelley Hazen), a befuddled novelist (Henry Dittman), a gaunt spinster (Jenifer Hamel), a singer with pitch-perfect screams (Lola Ward), her stalking fan (Pat Towne, who also directs), a mischievous maid (Ryan Templeton), a disturbed child (grown-up Paul Plunkett), a malevolent young man (Joe Fria) and a towering butler (Joe Jordan) who cedes little ground to Lurch of “Addams Family” fame.

There’s an Addams clan-like camaraderie among these core characters as they gleefully enact the series of vignettes that make up the evening. Where Charles Addams always played his creations against recognizably everyday experience, however, Gorey remains in a much weirder world all his own.

That world is impressively realized in Joel Daavid’s black-and-white decrepit-mansion set, bathed in Cricket Sloat’s sickly lighting. Composer and music director Graham Jackson provides haunting original music with a four-piece band of keyboards, violin and acoustic bass, with eerie effects from water-filled glasses and saw.

The individual segments are all fun and refreshingly free of any redeeming value. Yet Gorey on stage is as fragmented and elliptical an experience as we encounter in his cartoons, stories and poems. The one constant is that macabre death and random violence inevitably triumph over rationality and continuity. With such a one-note message, a little goes a long way. In aggregate, the repetitive material and tone require -- and thankfully receive -- resuscitation through considerable staging ingenuity.

-- Philip Brandes

“Gorey Stories,” Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays; also 8 p.m. Monday Oct. 31. Ends Nov. 13. $20 ($30 on Oct. 30 and 31). (310) 281-8337 or www.sacredfools.org. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.