Longing for days gone by

A darkly comic look at the ramifications of neighborhood gentrification for a troubled family, Keith Josef Adkins’ “Farewell, Miss Cotton” receives a memorable first outing from the Black Dahlia Theatre.

Urban renewal may be cleaning up Cincinnati’s West End, but it’s pure torture for old-timer Theo, an embittered former horn player. In a smoldering performance by Hugh Dane, Theo rages against the proliferation of upscale coffeehouses, restaurants, and yuppies, and longs for the Jazz Age glory days of his old venue, the Cotton Club -- now a local crack house.

Theo’s estranged grandson Robin (Arnell Powell) and daughter-in-law Dezzie (Juanita Jennings), who have recently taken him into their home on a trial basis, welcome the local changes as a new opportunity to “detoxify” their lives. Dezzie has finally summoned up the courage to pursue a lesbian relationship; Robin has switched from dealing drugs to cooking with garlic (“I’ve changed -- I’m complicated,” he declares with hilarious pride). His neighborhood transition sponsor (Ryan Johnston) is also an aspiring hip-hop artist -- further blurring the distinction between street rules and middle-class morality.

Theo, however, is the play’s most complex and deeply ambivalent character. He nastily undermines his family’s attempts at fulfillment and heaps scorn on A.W., a mild-mannered fellow musician from the old days (Jeris Lee Poindexter, in a superbly shaded performance). Yet even when Theo embarks on a vandalism spree to bring down the new order, Dane makes his pain sympathetic. Trapped in a world in which he does not belong, Theo desperately wants to return to the place where he was once loved.

This destination takes the form of a resurrected Cotton Club circa 1946, presided over by his lost love (Dawn-Lyen Gardner) who contacts Theo via Internet chat (she has the sultry chanteuse costume down pat, but not the period demeanor -- the only weak spot in an otherwise flawless cast).

Director Larry Biederman effectively juggles the play’s ambiguous realities, keeping us wondering whether Theo’s return to the club is an odyssey of magical realism or the fantasy of an unhinged mind.

This conceit is at times a bit too clever, and the play has its share of rough spots still in need of attention, but Adkins’ unique voice and refusal to settle for the obvious keeps us constantly surprised and engaged.

-- Philip Brandes

“Farewell, Miss Cotton,” Black Dahlia Theatre, 5453 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 26. $20. (866) 468-3399 or www.thedahlia.com. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

*

‘No Man’s Land’ is prime Pinter

In a well-appointed London study, two men -- apparently strangers -- share a drink. The host is an ailing but successful writer, his guest a threadbare but vigorous poet. Yet is there something they have in common beyond words? A woman, the past or a future fate?

In this Lost Studio production of Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land,” the play’s very uncertainty becomes a seductive invitation to a strange, and strangely familiar, world. With its sunless, eerie stillness, the writer’s study could be a dreamscape or an antechamber to eternity; behind the double doors upstage, oblivion seems to menace. As the men trade stories and barbs, their power plays feel increasingly desperate. Without each other, would each suddenly cease to exist?

Director John Pleshette draws vivid performances from his leads. As Hirst, an august man of letters, Mitchell Ryan is a granite-faced king staring down the specter of his own mortality; Tom Bower’s shabby, opportunistic Spooner trips nimbly across the silences, offering up his talk like a court jester auditioning for a royal gig. As a pair of classic Pinter toughs, Whip Hubley and Paul Jenkins get the shorter end of the stick; Pleshette has staged the piece with American accents, robbing these supporting characters of the Cockney rhythms that lend the play some of its best music.

No matter; Pinter is beyond borders. “No Man’s Land” offers a chilling glimpse of an all-too-human limbo: between the present moment and memory, relationship and solitude, being alive and facing death.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“No Man’s Land,” Lost Studio Theatre, 130 S. La Brea Ave., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 26. Running time: 2 hours.

*

‘Eclipsed’ is no whitewash

If a trip to the Laundromat has ever felt like a prison sentence, Theatre Banshee’s “Eclipsed” might help keep things in perspective. Patricia Burke Brogan’s harrowing drama concerns the Irish Catholic Church’s novel solution to the social problem of unwed mothers: stick the children in orphanages and confine the fallen women to laundry duty in church cellars to “wash away their sins” under lock and key for the rest of their lives. These “Magdalene laundry” asylums were nothing less than modern-day slave labor camps (the last one shut down in 1996).

The story of five Magdalene captives and their deep bonds of friendship and loyalty forged amid merciless oppression, “Eclipsed” was the Irish-focused Theatre Banshee’s well-received inaugural production. A decade later -- once again under the direction of company co-founder Sean Branney -- the revival still packs a considerable emotional punch, despite occasional lapses into melodrama.

Skillful performances differentiate the victimized women -- particularly effective are Josie DiVincenzo’s hot-tempered rebel and Leslie Baldwin’s dreamy romantic. Along with their fellow captives (Rebecca Marcotte, Melissa Jones, Andra Carlson), the inmates endure cruelties inflicted by Mother Victoria (Rebecca Wackler, who unfortunately lacks the intensity to make a formidable antagonist).

As a thinly veiled stand-in for the author (a former novitiate who witnessed the Magdalene atrocities first-hand), Lisa Dobbyn is sympathetic though tragically passive. With this play, Brogan was clearly working through some of her own guilt, which at times erupts in hyperbolic confrontations. She also tends toward formulaic plotting, but at her best, she records with clinical accuracy the real-world horrors inflicted on innocent victims, and the scraps of joy and laughter they somehow managed to snatch from under the noses of their captors.

-- P.B.

“Eclipsed,” Gene Bua Theatre, 3435 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 18. $18. (818) 628-0688 or www.theatrebanshee.org. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

*

Excoriating ‘Osama the Hero’

“You don’t need evidence for terrorists,” says one archetype in “Osama the Hero” at the Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, and a topical chill fills the house. British playwright Dennis Kelly’s 2005 excoriation of the current culture of fear scores stark frissons in its U.S. premiere.

The play’s title refers to a classroom speech made by Gary (Alex Walters), a misfit who takes on a non-Western perspective on terrorism. Gary’s account of his viewpoint interweaves with two couples from an inner-city housing estate in London. Francis (Ryan Harris), an unemployed, self-ordained vigilante, lives with his outwardly rational sister Louise (Brenda Kenworthy). Middle-aged, married Mark (Rick Kopps) plays out his midlife crisis with teenage Mandy (Jennifer Cadena) as a fantasy of TV celebrity.

At the prologue’s peak, references to a bombing on the estate cue up a coup de theatre. Director Scott Barber’s sound track booms, lighting designer Ryan Maes goes Bauhaus, and one wall of designer Steven Parker’s garage interior gives way. What ensues is a harrowing cautionary tale about how terrorism affects the terrorized, ending in another group monologue and a final tableau that is hard to shake.

Kelly’s staccato, unsparing style denotes a vital new voice. Barring some dialect tussles, Barber’s febrile actors deliver the goods. Walters is beyond praise in his nervous spontaneity and physical courage. Harris, as ever the chameleon, is both hateful and pathetic as Francis. Kenworthy’s Louise seems composed of pure nerve ends. As Mark, Koppsover does the accent, but his characterization is apt, and Cadena slyly delves beneath Mandy’s ingenuousness.

-- David C. Nichols

“Osama the Hero,” Empire Theater, 200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2: 30 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 11. Adult audiences. $18. (714) 547-4688. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

*

More questions than answers

A dual pulse of intrigue and satire wafts through “Vagrant.” Author-director Guy Zimmerman exploits our unwitting senses in his oddball psychological mystery, presented by Padua Playwrights at the Electric Lodge.

Set in a rundown South L.A. appliance repair shop (keenly suggested by Jeffrey Atherton’s striking scenic design), “Vagrant” concerns Meyer (the fierce Christopher Allport), the proprietor. He may or may not be an ex-con, just as uniformed Larkin (Patrick Burleigh, smoothly underplaying) may or may not be an LAPD officer. They banter in hyper-poetic, meticulously calibrated non-sequiturs that avoid pretentiousness through their sharp arrangement. Behind the upstage door lurks Patty (Niamh McCormally), Meyer’s much-younger wife. Or is she the child both she and Meyer refer to? Is she a seamstress or a prostitute when she’s offstage? And just how does Larkin know so much about both of them?

“Vagrant” just keeps spitting out narrative questions like olive pits. Even the central device of a title homeless person proves less a clue than unifying simile.

Zimmerman probably doesn’t need the intermission, despite its schematic precision, and his third-person syntax won’t be to all tastes. Nonetheless, Zimmerman draws this oblique scenario with assurance, and gives it a cagey symbolist staging. Kathi O’Donohue does a painterly lighting job, Don Preston’s sound design provides witty comment, and the shrewd cast catches the faux-noir tone. Darkly humorous and oddly arresting, “Vagrant” is fragrant with atmosphere. For all its deliberate opacity, the effects are lingering.

-- D.C.N.

“Vagrant,” Electric Lodge Performance Space, 1416 Electric Ave., Venice. 8 p.m Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends March 4. $15. (310) 823-0710 or reservations@paduaplaywrights.net. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

*

Getting high on Justin Tanner

Welcome to Pot Mom’s house in Salinas: a grungy pad where divorced, unemployed Patty tokes up by 10 a.m. to shut out the tug-of-war between her live-in lover and her three unruly teenagers (the stoner, the slut and the one with glasses). Much of the original cast have returned for this reprise of Justin Tanner’s 1994 cult hit, and the real pleasure of the show remains its perfectly calibrated ensemble. Kitchen-sink divas Ellen Ratner as Patty and best friend Laurie Metcalf (looking hilariously like Ozzy Osbourne’s strung-out sister) bring down the house trying to keep it together on an unsteady diet of weed, pop tarts and pep talks.

“Pot Mom” is less of a play than a string of scenes illustrating the apparently inarguable fact that when it comes to family life, we all hold each other hostage. Whatever your position on cannabis, there’s a desperately funny truth to Tanner’s upside-down view of a functional family: call it tough love, desperation or just plain jonesin’, domestic bliss requires endless acts of blackmail, and everyone’s self-medication of choice.

Like a decent high, “Pot Mom” won’t change your life, but it will guarantee a couple of hours of good times, with occasional bouts of uncontrollable laughter.

-- C.S.

“Pot Mom,” Third Stage Theatre, 2811 Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Ends April 1. Running time: 2 hours

*

Portillo reprises ‘L.A. Real’ solo

With its benign climate and natural abundance, California has long tempted developers of one sort or another, from colonizing nations to the ubiquitous real estate entrepreneurs of the present day.

“L.A. Real” attempts to dig beneath the freeway asphalt and faux Spanish-style housing tracts to trace one family’s deep roots in the state. The archeology is conducted by a woman whose lineage stretches back to 1771 and, like the land itself, has been repeatedly reshaped and redefined. “I’ll give my face a new meaning,” says the seeker in Theresa Chavez’s artfully abstract script. “Be an American mongrel. Or define myself according to any given historical moment -- Californio, Mexicana, Mexican American, Chicana, Hispanic, Latina, Mestiza .... “

First presented in 1992 as part of the National Women’s Theatre Festival in L.A., the show has returned, in somewhat revised form, under the aegis of About Productions, of which Chavez is co-founder and artistic director. Once again, she directs Rose Portillo’s solo performance. Fanciful and free-associative, the piece proves intriguing but also bewildering.

Making a symbolic entrance, Portillo rolls awake, knocking over a wall of Kevin Starr’s new California history books as she goes, then undulates and glides like a dancer through a 46-minute presentation that also incorporates “Twilight Zone”-style video segments, period photographs and family portraits.

The character’s quest takes her across the Los Angeles Basin, from a family pueblo paved under the Hollywood Freeway near the present-day theme world of Olvera Street to an ancient house surrounded by industrialized Bell. She seems, in the end, to want still more. Theatergoers may feel the same way. But with playful, adventuresome Portillo as guide, the audience is always in good company.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“L.A. Real,” [Inside] the Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 5. $20. (323) 461-3673 or www.FordAmphitheatre.org. Running time: 46 minutes.