He comes to praise tyranny

In “Machiavelli -- The Art of Terror,” author-director Robert Cohen revisits Niccolo Machiavelli and his epic 1513 manifesto “The Prince” with an eye toward accessibility and balancing history’s biases. If this intriguing study of the Florentine advocate of tyrannical governance only intermittently raises hackles, its handsome mounting by Cohen and his UC Irvine Field Station cohorts at the Hayworth Theatre keeps them on constant alert.

This fantasia, originally produced in 1997 by Cal Rep in Long Beach, opens at a 1525 commedia rehearsal of Machiavelli’s “Glizia.” The masked figures cavort with apt artifice on Douglas-Scott Goheen’s red-and-black set, halting at a harsh interruption from the back of the house. This brings Machiavelli (an invested Christopher Marshall) up on stage and back in time to trace his rise and fall to power in the republic of Florence.

Cohen addresses the challenges of dramatizing history through conversational dialogue with a decidedly current-day tone. When syphilitic Cesare Borgia (the imposing Jeffrey Takacs) rhapsodizes over torture, he carries echoes of Robert Duvall greeting the smell of napalm in “Apocalypse Now,” and his verbal jousts with Machiavelli are reminiscent of more than one televised debate.

Leonardo da Vinci (Richard Brestoff) bemoans resinous walls with dark humor worthy of Dennis Potter; Allesandro de Medici (Marquis Henderson) seems ready for HBO, and so on. Gregory Joseph Allen, Cynthia Beckert, Andrea Caban and Sean Spann complete the assured ensemble.

The designs are similarly impressive, with Katie Wilson’s period costumes and Leah Springman’s austere lighting adding considerable style. True, deliberate anachronisms and academic input don’t always serve topical intent. The profanity distracts as much as not, and fewer exposed references would deepen dramatic impulse, not to mention audience reaction to the parallels. Nonetheless, the literate timeliness of “Machiavelli” is fascinating.

-- David C. Nichols

“Machiavelli -- The Art of Terror,” UC Irvine Field Station Theatre at the Hayworth, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends Sept. 2. $20. (800) 838-3006 . Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

*

Brooding ‘Pericles’ as family romp

How do you turn a Shakespearean drama rife with incest, violence and prostitution into a G-rated family diversion?

With much tongue-in-cheek misdirection, as it turns out.

Shakespeare’s later, “lesser” romance, “Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” forms the basis of “Pericles on the High Seas,” a frisky Actors’ Gang production freely adapted into an all-ages vaudeville by Angela Berliner, with the dark and naughty bits expunged or camouflaged for the enjoyment of discerning adults.

Performed in the park next to the company’s Ivy Substation theater in Culver City, the casual setup has a motley traveling troupe in the Old West, raggle-taggle costumes over long johns and lace-up boots, performing against muslin curtains hung from spreading trees.

With the aid of a few props, live music, shameless sight gags and some witty puppetry worked from behind the central curtain, the company romps through the adventures of Pericles (Marcos Menendez) -- a shipwreck, two storms at sea (squirt guns), a joust (puppets and actors), a wife won and lost, a magician, pirates (big puppet heads), a misplaced daughter sold to a baker (instead of a brothel) and a family reunion aided by goddess Diana (Vanessa Mizzone).

Director P. Adam Walsh keeps a loose but guiding hand on the reins and the veteran actors, most in multiple roles, remain heroically wink-free, even when Lindsley Allen, as the daughter forced into baked goods servitude, is sweetly dissuading gentlemen customers from indulging in her muffins and pastries.

An appealing homespun touch: high school student Halimah Najieb-Locke and grade-schooler Jorge DeNeve as the play’s narrators.

-- Lynne Heffley

“Pericles on the High Seas,” Media Park, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City. 11 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays; ends Aug. 26. Pay-what-you-can. Some chairs provided; blankets for seating suggested. (310) 838-4264. Running time: 50 minutes.

*

Melodrama rages in ‘Yankee Trader’

“Do you know who you are?” asks the maternal voice that haunts “A Yankee Trader,” presented by Virtual Theatre Project at the El Portal Forum Theatre. “Do you know where you come from?” These questions frame Kato McNickle’s play about a family divided during the Great Hurricane of 1938, amid a storm of flashbacks that inform the Rhode Island plot.

Shadow Woman (Pamela Taylor), a former slave, addresses her son, Dillon Taber (Mark Arnold), the title trader, whose father got his mother in a swap. After assaulting a politico’s son, Dillon is a wanted man, as his wife, Katie (Heidi Mages), learns from former swain Patrick Cowan (Sean Mahon). Patrick, a bachelor with a secret, loans Dillon his car to escape and shelters Katie and her children (Sterling Beaumon and Jaymee Bishop) at his estate. Braving the deluge with his shiftless cousin (Lauren McCormack) and world-weary “egg seller” Teresa Brown (April D. Parker), Dillon nurses his jealousy over the suitor that Katie’s upwardly mobile Irish father favored.

Laced with ambition, bigotry and gender issues in Depression-era America, this clash of wills and nature builds to a melodramatic climax. Yet the ripe narrative pull of McNickle’s imagination carries us past purple patches, aided by the stalwart cast. Mages gives Katie an inner fiber that recalls early Laura Linney, and Mahon’s sensitive Patrick brings nuance to an over-schematic role. Beaumon keeps Dillon’s son and younger self distinctly separate.

Although talented, Arnold is more intellectual than visceral as lit-fuse Dillon, chewing up designer Jonathan Christman’s skeletal set to compensate. Sporadic vagaries also attend director Ian Vogt’s largely evocative staging, with several technical misfires marring the reviewed performance. However, set against the page-turner story, it’s an acceptable trade-off.

-- D.C.N.

“A Yankee Trader,” El Portal Forum Theatre, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 10. $20. (866) 811-4111. Running time: 2 hours.