Aches, pains of ‘Flu Season’

One doesn’t normally associate avant-garde theater with sweetness. Although it defies easy description, Will Eno’s nonlinear romance “The Flu Season,” a production by California Repertory at the Edison Theatre, contains a richly humane core that Stefan Novinski emphasizes in his sensitive staging.

The action is set in a psychiatric hospital during a harsh winter, a milieu that Eno evokes with Proustian specificity. Sibyl Wickersheimer’s stark set and Nick Solyom’s lighting design emphasize that this is, indeed, “flu season,” a time of crystalline natural beauty and hidden peril.

The stage is flanked by Prologue (Catherine Reeder) and Epilogue (Josh Nathan), a sort of chorus that comments on events before and after they occur. A character reminiscent of the Stage Manager in “Our Town,” the unabashedly sentimental Prologue sets the halcyon scene, while the sardonic Epilogue foreshadows the disaster that will follow.

The story follows the arc of two romances. New patients at the facility, a Man (Mark Frankos) and a Woman (Sarah Goldblatt) have an ill-fated affair. At the same time, the hospital’s administrators, a Doctor (John Short) and Nurse (Marjo-Riikka), fall in love.

The interactions between the characters are poetically cryptic. Key to deciphering Eno’s intentions is Epilogue, who acts as a sort of alter ego to Eno. Harsh critic and analyst, Epilogue interrupts the proceedings to remind us that this is, after all, fiction. Epilogue may emphasize the artifice of the writer’s craft -- but his rationalism doesn’t hide his raw emotional connection to the material.

Thanks to a stringently naturalistic cast, we too feel these characters’ pain. But final analysis reveals several cheats on Eno’s part, most noticeably the Man’s herky-jerky transformation from nice guy to unfeeling brute and the Woman’s from strong female to victim. Even a nonlinear narrative requires a little motivation behind its major plot twists.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“The Flu Season,” California Repertory at the Edison Theatre, 213 E. Broadway, Long Beach. 7 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. matinee March 18. Ends March 18. $20. (562) 985-5526. www.calrep.org. Running time: 2 hours.

‘Bash’s’ killer monologues

In cataloging ordinary folks’ limitless capacity for what he calls “matter of fact brutality,” playwright-filmmaker Neil LaBute pulls no punches. Neither do his characters in the superbly staged guest production of “Bash” at the Odyssey Theatre.

Bad behavior -- unapologetic and unredeemed -- is a familiar theme in LaBute’s work (“In the Company of Men,” “The Shape of Things”). His sharpest and most economical writing, however, is in this trio of confessional one-acts about unexceptional people who’ve each killed others.

Their stories, unfolding in masterfully constructed monologues addressed to the audience, span a motivational gamut from willful negligence to homicidal rage to premeditated murder. Even more horrifying than their actions is the narrators’ lack of concern or responsibility for the consequences -- and the ease with which they draw us into a world with no moral foundation.

Dan Bonnell’s precise staging hits all the right notes with only the subtlest embellishment -- projected shadows of a wire cage, guilty hands lighted in red. In “Iphigenia in Orem,” Brian Cousins shines as a likable Utah businessman whose initial disarming small talk sets up a dreadful revelation about a death resulting from a practical joke and the numb guilt he carries as he goes about his daily routine.

When the squeaky-clean, self-absorbed college students -- hot tempered, homophobic jock (Jon Beavers) and his perky girlfriend (Mandy Siegfried) -- begin their story about a Manhattan weekend trip in “A Gaggle of Saints,” dread builds under their amusingly vapid prattle as elements of violence surface in increasingly graphic detail.

“Medea Redux” features Candace McAdams as a chilling latter-day incarnation of the archetypally wronged woman, calmly recounting her calculated retaliation against the former schoolteacher who seduced her when she was 13.

LaBute’s use of Greek tragedy for underlying structure does nothing to ennoble these characters -- if anything, it underscores how bankrupt their tawdry lives are in comparison (tellingly, they all relate their situations to popular movies). Unlike morality tales that affirm integrity by its absence, “Bash” offers no easy comforts -- daring us instead to find our own way to fill the ethical void.

Sentimentalists need not apply.

-- Philip Brandes

“Bash,” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 12. $20. (310) 477-2055 or www.odysseytheatre.com. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

True ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’

Ignore the altered article. “A Picture of Dorian Gray,” Michael Michetti’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s lurid classic “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” is as scholarly and reverential a treatment as you would find in any doctoral dissertation.

Classical, also, is Michetti’s beautifully composed world premiere staging at the Boston Court, which incorporates virtuosic design elements, most notably Michetti’s arresting scenic design, to provide an impressionistic glimpse of Victorian England at its most sumptuous and squalid. Steven Young’s evocative lighting, Amanda Seymour’s lovely costumes and Robert Oriol’s eerie sound are all integral to the period ambience, while choreographer John Pennington’s dance sequences act as striking visual metaphors to the main action.

There’s a wee worm in paradise, however. Michetti has immersed himself so utterly in his source material that this “Dorian” is as much a recapitulation as it is a theatrical adaptation. Michetti does Wilde justice -- to a fault. At 2 hours, 40 minutes, this conscientious but overlong production could stand a good trim.

The story concerns the beautiful young Dorian Gray (Steve Coombs), who makes the rash wish that he can remain forever young, while his youthful portrait endures the ravages of time -- and sin. Of course, Dorian gets his wish -- and, after a lifetime devoted to vice, a hideous comeuppance.

Decried as obscene when first published in 1891, Wilde’s novella, with its covert references to homosexuality, was used as evidence in Wilde’s later trial. Michetti delicately emphasizes those (at the time) inexpressible undercurrents without resorting to postmodern sexual blatancy.

Andrew Borba is effortlessly Wildean and witty as Lord Henry Wotton, the wealthy older aesthete who exerts a pernicious influence on the impressionable Dorian. J. Todd Adams, who plays Basil Hallward, Dorian’s adoring painter and the moral center of the piece, makes his potentially didactic character richly sympathetic and matter-of-fact. While he is effective as the youthful Dorian, Coombs stumbles a bit in portraying Dorian’s progression from innocence to murderous corruption. Coombs doesn’t afford an adequate peek at the monster under the pretty outward mask -- a shortcoming that robs this “Portrait” of some of its vibrancy.

-- F.K.F.

“A Picture of Dorian Gray,” The Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 2. $30. (626) 683-6883. www.bostoncourt.org. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes

‘Woods,’ war, but not much magic

From the forest of themes in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Into the Woods,” community responsibility dominates the nobly intended Actors Co-op revision of this popular fairy tale musical. Director Jon Lawrence Rivera conjures a heartfelt wartime parable, but, despite a sweet esprit de corps under Brent Crayon’s musical direction, errant voices mar the score, and concept crushes content.

This registers with the stark prologue amid designer Gary Lee Reed’s thicket of ladders and bomb crashes from Chris Grote’s soundscape. The rethought archetypes, like putting Mark Kinsey Stephenson’s Narrator in a press flak jacket, are hardly story time. Denise Scarms’ tremulous Cinderella and Rick Marcus as her Prince are aptly traditional, Michelle Allsopp’s lower-range Rapunzel and John Allsopp as her Prince resourcefully quirky.

As the Baker and his Wife, Louis Tucker and Callan White have ample sincerity, little chemistry. The absent self-mutilation by stepsisters Sharline Liu and Andrea Kim Walker is jarring, since they and Maria Lay as their mom go for camp broke elsewhere. Updating the Witch (Linda Kerns) as a bag person yields scant fun; pop teens Jack (Matt Lutz) and Little Red Riding Hood (Deborah Lynn Meier) fare better. Perplexingly, Rivera portrays Jack’s cow (Tannis Hanson) as a milk-guzzling mute in a Pollyanna dress with baby-bottle bodice (costumes by Paula Higgins).

Barring Kathi O’Donohue’s shadow box lighting, the monochromatic palette wears thin, and Cate Caplin’s martial choreography grows repetitious. The property’s enduring appeal may carry fans past the liberties taken, but these “Woods” are not exactly magical, less Grimm than Grotowski.

-- David C. Nichols

“Into the Woods.” Crossley Terrace Theatre, 1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Sundays, 2:30 Sundays. Ends April 2. $30. (323) 462-8460. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

A fine gesture

by ‘Claire Z.’?

The Sacred Fools rush in, as the saying goes, with a brash, fearless and playfully unconventional staging in “Claire Z.,” a gesture-based adaptation of the 1956 Friedrich Durrenmatt chestnut, “The Visit.”

Through a combination of interpretive movement and updated dialogue, creator-director John Wuchte mines inventively stylish fun from Durrenmatt’s allegorical tale of a fabulously wealthy widow who returns to the now-impoverished hometown that once spurned her.

An energetic cast depicts the Hobson’s choice facing the desperate -- and greedy -- villagers when Claire Zachanassian (imperious, flinty Terra Shelman) offers to bail them out of their financial straits. Naturally, there’s a catch: Claire wants them to execute her former lover, Alfred (Scot Young), who got her pregnant and abandoned her.

Now an upstanding shopkeeper slated to become the town’s next mayor, Alfred sinks into paranoia as his neighbors cycle through predictable levels of hypocrisy about Claire’s offer.

Wuchte’s staging flourishes include an eclectic original score (by Maksim Velichkin), which draws on ‘60s pop tunes, and bright, whimsical costumes by Janet Vincent Lee.

While the show sports some fine performances (particularly from Shelman and Young), Wuchte is working primarily with actors, not movement specialists, and the gesture work is inevitably less expressive and precise as a result.

The emphasis on physical storytelling also sacrifices some of the depth and complexity in the original dialogue. Along the way, the staging conceit runs out of steam before the play runs out of plot.

-- Philip Brandes

“Claire Z.,” Sacred Fools Theater , 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 26. $15. (310) 281-8337 or www.sacredfools.org. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes