‘Golden Hour’ for spiritual quests

Few topics in the theater are trickier to bring off than spiritual queries. That makes “The Golden Hour” at GTC Burbank unusually noteworthy. Philip W. Chung’s piquant account of challenged faith within the Korean American community receives a proficient Lodestone Theatre Ensemble staging.

It follows Laura Park (the excellent Linda Shing), a Los Angeles paralegal who reexamines her beliefs when, after rejecting would-be fiance Stephen (Ryun Yu), she has a traffic accident and a near-death experience. While psychically hearing various thoughts of bystanders and drivers, Laura notes one stranger who prays for her well being.

After recovering, Laura tracks down the supplicant, Hee-Sun Park (Saachiko), a grieving mother and the pivot of “Golden Hour’s” narrative. The relationship between the two unrelated Parks eventually incorporates Caroline (Rachel Morihiro), Laura’s wild-card sister, and Pastor Dustin (Eddie Shin), whose sermons on Job carry playwright Chung’s subtext.

Chung could lose some extraneous details and sitcom jokes (though they are often very funny). Furthermore, the news reports of various tragedies voiced by Rob Fukuzaki point toward a larger work than this intimate character study. Yet “Golden Hour” succeeds through its core integrity, which director Jeff Liu and company locate with easy warmth that offsets teleplay tactics.

Designs are simple and effective, especially Mina Kinukawa’s set and Christopher M. Singleton’s lighting, and the ensemble is solid.

Shing nails Laura’s every beat, from opening account to final enigmatic gaze. Her colleagues respond accordingly, which sustains our interest in this unaffected treatise on the mysteries of divine intervention.

-- David C. Nichols

“The Golden Hour,” GTC Burbank, 1111-B W. Olive Ave., Burbank. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 21. $15. (323) 993-7245 or www.lodestonetheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

A martyr’s story speaks for the ages

Given the Iraq war and the fierce debate over religious fundamentalism in the Middle East and at home, it’s hard to find a more relevant piece of theater than Euripides’ 2,500-year-old tragedy, “Iphigenia in Aulis.”

After Trojan hunk Paris makes off with Greek King Menelaus’ celebrated spouse, Helen, the Greeks assemble their army to retrieve the trophy wife and their national pride. One problem: the weather isn’t cooperating. Seems that divine will (or is it political pressure?) decrees that Menelaus’ brother, Agamemnon, must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia so that the gods will fill the Greek ships’ sails with the strong winds of war. But if he kills his daughter, is Agamemnon a monster or a tragic hero?

Director Jack Stehlin makes sure Euripides’ question stays front and center by keeping the set minimal and the actors intensely focused. John Ross Clark is a particularly fine Menelaus, and Strawn Bovee as Clytaemnestra gives a quietly agonizing performance as a regal woman rendered helpless by larger events.

In this modern-dress adaptation by Colette Freedman, “Iphigenia” becomes a chilling account of how the juggernaut of religion, nationalism and political need can create a state-sanctioned suicide martyr.

Iphigenia (Jade Sealey) heads to Artemis’ altar as a princess gowned in white, but she might just as well be wearing a burka and belt full of explosives or a uniform with insufficient body armor.

“Iphigenia” starts out worryingly slow but builds to an eerie, incantatory climax: Is Iphigenia’s ecstasy as she goes to her death a convert’s fanaticism or a selfless, transcendent vision? Euripides, and Circus Theatricals, lets the audience decide.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“Iphigenia in Aulis,” Circus Theatricals Studio Theatre at the Hayworth, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Ends May 20. $20. (323) 960-1054. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Love’s roundelay, in a country house

Oh, those Bloomsbury bohemians: artist Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf, was married to Clive Bell but lived most of her life with the flamboyantly bisexual painter Duncan Grant in an idyllic country house in West Sussex. In “Equinox,” now receiving its world premiere staging at the Odyssey Theatre, playwright Joyce Sachs imagines Grant’s friend and Everest mountaineer George Mallory’s entrance into this rampantly codependent artist’s retreat on a late September weekend in 1923.

Amid casual nudity, bouts of painting and plenty of alcohol, the artists (Carolyn Hennesy and Robert Stephenson) and their guest (Ralph Lister) play out past and future seductions -- and abandonments.

“Equinox” wants to be a close study of love: how, at any given moment, the feeling can act as muse, parent, jailer. But Sachs’ most deeply felt passages are monologues revealing an internal passion, not an interpersonal one: Mallory’s vision of Everest, or Grant’s description of how a painting springs to life. The result is a sensual play -- aided considerably by Tom Buderwitz’s knockabout-elegant drawing room of a set, and Shon Le Blanc’s casually seductive costumes -- but not a particularly dramatic one.

What finally registers in “Equinox” is a sense of intimacy, because of the finely calibrated performances of an accomplished (and, yes, gorgeous) cast under the careful direction of Jules Aaron. What’s missing, however, is the sense of something genuinely at risk.

-- C.S.

“Equinox,” the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 28. $25. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Singing songs

of ‘Murder’

In “Next Stop ... Murder,” author Frank Semerano takes on Eisenhower-era detective fiction and, courtesy of five agreeable satirical numbers by songwriter Clifford J. Tasner, “West Side Story.” However, this 1950s parody, for all the charm of director Aura Figueiredo’s exuberant cast, is promising at best.

As demonstrated by “The Tangled Snarl” and “Murder Me Once” (co-written with John Rustan) at the Fremont Centre in 2004, Semerano has a knack for nonstop quips. In “Next Stop,” which concerns nerdy professor Myron Amberworth (Lon Haber), Semerano turns his knack into a tic.

“I’ve been mishandled, Myron, more times than luggage on an international flight,” says reporter Lilah Davenport (Kelsa Kinsly), the posthumous narrator-victim. Countless other zingers and groaners pop up -- for instance, “paleontologist” misheard as “pale gynecologist.” The vaudevillian scenario turns on a giant diamond and takes in juvenile delinquents Dena (Alison McMillan) and Knuckles (Ian Madeira), Dena’s overprotective father (Marc Ian Sklar) and myna-voiced Tilly Plumms (Michelle Ann Owens), Myron’s unwanted girlfriend.

Pianist Dylan Gentile keeps up a jazzy feel, and choreographer Paul Reid does some nice pseudo-Robbins maneuvers. At the reviewed Easter Sunday performance, the actors valiantly coped with light attendance and a stream of onstage mishaps. Still, improvisational aplomb is one thing, lack of cohesion quite another. “Next Stop ... Murder” is not a finished musical but an overstretched sketch that needs many more songs and much less cornball overload. Next stop ... rewrites.

-- D.C.N.

“Next Stop ... Murder,” Gene Bua Acting for Life Theatre, 3435 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 21. $20. (818) 206-4206. 2 hours, 5 minutes.