‘Bukowsical!’ is seeking support

In the hilarious opening number of “Bukowsical!” running at Sacred Fools, we are informed, “there’s a little Bukowski in all of you too.” That sounds about right. Actor Steven Memel, playing, why, Steven Memel, welcomes us to “the Sacred Angel Fist Circle of Note Gang Theatre Company’s final backer’s audition,” and take-no-prisoners pandemonium ensues.

That is the intention. Although Spencer Green and Gary Stockdale’s witty late-night goof certainly riffs on the scabrous poet, what they, director-choreographer Dean Cameron and the players really skewer are fringe festival musicals and, by default, the Broadway conventions that various outstanding entries in the field have fruitfully satirized.

Thus, Buk (David Lawrence) finds himself the bemused center of a series of delirious numbers that follow key scenes of Bukowskiana in winking, Busby Berkeley-on-acid fashion. Highlights include “Chaser of My Heart,” a duet between our hero and his True Love (Fleur Phillips), the randy “Road Song” and a “Hollywood Trio” for Barbet Schroeder (Michael Lanahan), Sean Penn (Ian R. Gould) and Mickey Rourke (Matthew Garland). The cast is completed by Kathi Copeland and Christina Byron, with Byron’s Sweet Lady Booze get-up one of costume designer Ruth Silveira’s brightest ideas.

Everyone’s gonzo abandon and the eclectic bounce of Stockdale’s music and his and Green’s lyrics almost disguise that “Bukowsical!” is not yet a full-fledged show. To achieve the rank of such predecessors as “Urinetown” and “Blake ... da Musical!” the dualistic concept of backer’s audition against improbable subject, and the score’s response to same, needs fleshing out. Yet it’s still an uproarious romp.

-- David C. Nichols

“Bukowsical!” Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Hollywood. 11 p.m. Fridays. May 26. No shows April 7, May 5. Ends May 26. Adult audiences. $10. (310) 281-8337 or www.SacredFools.org. Running time: 1 hour.

A true genius’ everyday life

Plays about famous people, especially great artists, are asking for trouble. They run the risk of being too impressed with their protagonists, thereby keeping us mortals at a distance -- or trying to domesticate them, which can diminish their dramatic power.

Currently playing at the Odyssey Theatre, “Chekhov and Maria,” Jovanka Bach’s two-hander about the Russian playwright’s last years in Yalta, finds an intriguing, if unstable, middle ground in its exploration of the everyday life of a genius at work.

A tubercular, impatient Chekhov (Ron Bottitta) tries to complete “The Cherry Orchard” and conceive a child with his new wife, actress Olga Knipper, before his health fails. Meanwhile, his devoted sister, Maria (Gillian Brashear), struggles between her self-sacrificing awe of her brother and a longing for a life of her own. Should you love someone, Bach’s play asks, even if letting them be who they are will break your heart?

On opening night, neither actor had settled into his or her role, and at times the show, unevenly directed by Bach’s widower, John Stark, tripped over its own feet. But Brashear seemed on her way to giving a clear, quietly moving performance, making the play’s final moments -- a quotation from Sonya’s transcendent speech in “Uncle Vanya” about the happiness she’ll be given in the afterlife -- land with particular poignancy.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“Chekhov and Maria” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 9. $17.50. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes

The power of the black experience

The show begins with a scene from George C. Wolfe’s deconstructionist comedy “The Colored Museum” in which a woman, dancing with joyous abandon, tells us there’s a party going on inside of her that connects her to “everybody and everything that’s ever been” a part of African American history. “My power,” she says, “is in my madness and my colored contradictions.”

This playfully in-your-face monologue sets the tone for “Colored Contradictions,” a collection of 10 scenes and songs about the African American experience. Presented at Company of Angels, it’s the collective effort of four directors, 15 actors, a drummer and a weekly changing spoken-word artist.

Perhaps the chief example of its “contradictions” comes in the second half, when a scene from Euripides’ ancient Greek tragedy “Electra” -- insightfully imagined (by director Ayana Cahrr) and strongly performed (by Kila Kitu as Electra and Lee Sherman as Clytemnestra) -- is followed by a mini-musical (written by Paula Mitchell Manning and Robert Max, directed by Angela Duckett) in which black performers in “Gone With the Wind” decry the stereotypical roles they’ve been assigned. In the juxtaposition, we see achievement emerge, triumphantly, out of a difficult past.

Also a highlight is a bluesy treatment of Zora Neale Hurston’s “Story in Harlem Slang” (directed by Nancy Cheryll Davis).

In it, the showboating behavior of competing hustlers (Freddie DeGrate and Charles Allen) bears a striking resemblance to attitudes now permeating hip-hop.

After all of this, the show’s wrap-up -- the big Jennifer Holliday anthem from “Dreamgirls” -- takes on new meaning. As sung at the reviewed performance by Karen McClain, the lyrics “and I am telling you, I’m not going” became a statement of pride, issued to the nation at large. “I’m stayin’,” the song concludes, “and ... you’re gonna love me.”

-- Daryl H. Miller

“Colored Contradictions,” Company of Angels, 2106 Hyperion Ave., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends April 8. $15. (323) 883-1717. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

A slacker comes between them

Mega-slacker Brian, better known as H-Bomb, is in freefall, and he knows it. CD collector Chris, the Bomb’s roommate since college, knows it, but he would rather not face it. But Melanie, Chris’ fiancee and no less the bane of H-Bomb’s existence than he is of hers, is adamant. Her wedding approaches, and in four weeks, the slacker must go. Meanwhile, H-Bomb runs out of things to auction on EBay and grows increasingly nihilistic.

That sums up Ron Kleir’s “Waste of Shame” at the Elephant Space Theatre in its VS. Theatre Company premiere. It is typically strong in physical execution, John G. Williams’ fine scenic design presenting a perfect picture of St. Louis apartment banality, which Derrick McDaniel’s lighting accents. As H-Bomb, the downwardly spiraling center of author-director Kleir’s seriocomic look at conflicted loyalties, Kyle Johnston gives a vivid performance that is worthy of the late John Cazale in its hypnotic focus.

This almost overrides the off-kilter pace of Kleir’s direction, here realistic, there antic. Johnny Clark and Kimberly-Rose Wolter are gifted actors, yet their talent only partly prevails over the explicated motives of passive Chris and aggressive Melanie.

All stems from Kleir’s oddly structured script, which begins as post-”Friends” adult comedy, hints at thriller without making good on it, and ends almost as modern-day Odets. Except that Kleir’s denouement inverts the punch, putting H-Bomb’s exit, which ought to be an ironic capper, before the couples’ face-off, one of several passages where this respectable effort needs revision.

-- D.C.N.

“Waste of Shame,” Elephant Space Theatre, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 9. Adult audiences. $20. (323) 860-3283. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

Taking ‘Tempest’ into the future

N.J. Smeets’ director’s notes imagine a “Tempest” of the future, in which Ariel is a (multiple) clone and Caliban a science experiment gone wrong. Intriguing ideas, but they don’t really register on stage in this messy, occasionally inventive chamber version of Shakespeare’s desert island fantasy.

Carl Crudup as Prospero offers a commanding, leonine presence, anchoring the show by sheer charisma. There is nice work from Adam Burch as Ferdinand, and a surprisingly erotic version of Prospero’s Act IV wedding gift to his daughter -- who knew Hymen’s pageant could feature hot girl-on-girl action?

Yet too much of the production, especially the scenes in which Trinculo and Stefano drunkenly persuade Caliban to be their road dog, is simply incomprehensible. The heavy doses of poetry and back story in “The Tempest” make it notoriously difficult to activate, and although the cast may be speaking Shakespeare’s words, most haven’t found the rhythm and storytelling drive necessary to cast a genuine theatrical spell.

-- C.S.

“The Tempest” The MET Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 30. $15. (323) 957-1152. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

A night away,

a very long night

The progeny of Generation X meets Lanford Wilson in “Quarterlife,” a Sight Unseen Theatre Group production at the Pico Playhouse. Whether Sam Forman’s dramedy about four 25-year-olds weekending in the country and baring their issues reaches more than its specific demographic, which it may well please, is indeterminate.

Taking place over one night in an upstate New Hampshire cabin (beautifully rendered by designer Michael Brainerd), “Quarterlife” chiefly concerns Jack (Clark Freeman) and Sally (Bitsie Tulloch), a mismatch of “Sex and the City” proportions. In high school, Jack was the star quarterback, Sally the drama club diva. His NFL hopes, her Broadway dreams and their relationship have not exactly worked out, as we learn amid cable-raw business and dialogue with Maggie (Em Dreiling), Sally’s best friend who as a teen vacationed with Sally and the parents.

Across the lake is Peter (Tamlin Hall), once an overweight geek who pined for Sally. Now a grunge cutie and off-Broadway author-director, Peter’s arrival causes undercurrents and overtones to emerge, combust and reverse.

Despite a solid physical production and some pert performances under Matt Doherty’s direction, the text, though intelligently written and at times quite funny, is heavy on the vernacular, light on the stakes, hardly unpredictable. Neither the characters nor their exposed conflicts are conducive to rooting for or against them, and the distance makes “Quarterlife” seem more an incipient Sundance offering than a finished play.

-- D.C.N.

“Quarterlife,” Pico Playhouse, 10508 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Ends April 15. Adult audiences. $15. (877) 986-7336 or www.sightunseentheatre.com. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.