Taking on a tangled issue with ‘Grace’

Questions of faith and science tend to polarize around predictable rhetoric, but Craig Wright’s “Grace” brings refreshing -- though far from reassuring -- complexity to what is fast becoming the most urgent philosophical issue of our time.

A former Methodist seminarian turned writer for stage (“Recent Tragic Events”) and TV (“Six Feet Under”), Wright spins rigorous theological inquiry with an accomplished dramatist’s flair. Edgy, raucous and uncompromising, his dark examination of fundamentalist Christians adrift in suburban Florida receives a sharp staging from the Furious Theatre Company.

A deceptively conventional love triangle, whose tragic outcome we witness at the outset, drives the story of Steve (Brad Price) and Sara (Sara Hennessy), a devout Minnesota couple newly arrived in the Sunshine State to develop a chain of Gospel-themed “Sonrise” motels with the catchy slogan: “Where would Jesus stay?”

Uptight and inflexible in his belief system, Steve pursues this dream with a painfully naive lack of reality testing where his funding is concerned. The lonely Sara makes a reclamation project out of their neighbor, Sam (Eric Pargac), an agnostic engineer embittered by a car crash that killed his fiancee and left him disfigured. Dana Kelly Jr. delivers a memorable supporting turn as a cynical pest exterminator.

The inevitable romantic betrayal comes as no surprise, but the ways these characters wrestle with it aches with unexpected and unsettling spiritual anguish. How can Sara’s noble ideal that “we’re here for each other, not just here beside each other” be reconciled with the inescapable clash of individual needs born of that interconnectedness?

With admirable clarity, director Damaso Rodriguez steers his skilled cast through Wright’s dense ruminations, with notable fuel from Doug Newell’s high-decibel sound design.

While sometimes upstaged by its own cleverness, this thoughtful piece effectively frames the potential catastrophic consequences that go with being a believer rather than a knower -- whether in a Florida condo or by implication a more prominent Pennsylvania Avenue address.

-- Philip Brandes

“Grace,” Pasadena Playhouse Carrie Hamilton Theatre, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 11. $15-$24. (626) 356-7529 or www.furioustheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Wilson’s ‘Jitney’ arrives with polish

Powerhouse performances and fine staging lend fire and authenticity to the late August Wilson’s “Jitney” at Hollywood’s Lillian Theatre. Many of the Stagewalker Productions team that mounted an accomplished “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” revival in this venue in 2004 have returned with even sharper focus and polish this time around.

Director Claude Purdy is a worthy torchbearer for Wilson’s dramatic vision, with its vivid characters, street-smart wit and wisdom, and unsentimental, clear-eyed insight into the struggles of black Americans.

Set in 1977, this installment of Wilson’s 10-play “Pittsburgh Cycle” chronicling life in different decades of the last century depicts a group of “gypsy” taxi drivers serving a poor neighborhood that licensed cabs refuse to enter. Amid the realistically detailed rundown former law office and pay phone that serves as their dispatch station, the regulars play checkers, squabble and meddle in one another’s lives as they wait for customer calls.

Presiding as foster patriarch over this rowdy family is the self-made owner, Becker, played by James Avery with affecting heart and dignity. In one of the play’s three main subplots, Becker faces an uncomfortable reunion with his son, Booster (fiery Richard Brooks), just released from prison after a 20-year sentence. With the implacable logic of a Greek tragedy, Booster’s crime embodied the no-win dilemma of a man of principle whose only way to defend his integrity was through murder -- a heartbreaking paradox of this country’s fractured racial heritage. Sadly, father and son can’t get past their mutual disappointment in one another.

Against that conflict is the touchingly played romance between Youngblood (Russell Andrews), a Vietnam War vet chasing the American dream of homeownership, and his girl (Lizette Diaz Carion).

Embracing broader social issues, the jitney drivers are facing the impending demolition of their headquarters as part of an urban renewal project that promises nothing but dislocation and menace.

Written in 1986, “Jitney” was one of Wilson’s first plays, and despite subsequent reworking its inherent structural limitations (Booster’s late entrance, a thickly melodramatic penultimate scene) reveal a major talent still grappling with the mechanics of his craft. Although Wilson dealt more effectively with some of these themes in later works, a pitch-perfect ensemble gives it the best possible treatment. Here’s hoping this company continues the series -- Wilson’s legacy is in good hands.

-- P.B.

“Jitney,” Lillian Theatre, 1076 Lillian Way, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 19. $28-$32. (323) 960-7721 or www.plays411.com/jitney. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Zombie Joe’s esprit de corpse

Zombie Joe’s Underground and Halloween go together like Norman Bates and motels, as demonstrated by “Urban Death: Blood Transfusion,” the experimental theater group’s latest show. This fearlessly enacted cycle of grim vignettes, some hilariously creepy, others simply ill, flies its freak flag with arterial elan.

While the unmistakable rasp of Tom Waits lowers our guard, the pre-show features actor Mark Hein, crouched naked upstage against the stark black wall. As composer Christopher Reiner’s ambient music pulses, the lights lower and rise again on a pile of corpses in careful disarray. They raise themselves into a silently screaming sunburst, arms outstretched. A series of psychotic tableaux follows.

These take on issues such as cannibalism with gory relish and a trademark sense of the absurd. In the vein of campfire tales, grisly humor leavens the program right up to its in-the-dark incantation of “Bloody Mary,” the biggest frisson.

Certain images stick -- Jana Wimer’s dogged soubrette mopping up after carnage, or impish Jonica Patella astride Hein as a twisting, towering ghost. The morbid, Mirabella-garbed “Loss Dance” by Angela Schnaible, Marcella Raya and choreographer Denise Devin is a demented stitch.

Colin Kramer, Schnaible and Maria Olsen invest their tango for man, woman and late girlfriend with pitch-black finesse. Billy Minoque drags unconscious victim Raya away to a slapstick collision, and the acne sequence is gamy enough for “South Park.” Other spots -- various mutilations, a hellish finale -- attack the horrific jugular. A postmillennial spook house cannot take prisoners.

The designs, credited to Zombie Joe and company, display cracked invention on a spectral budget. Although not for children or weak stomachs, “Urban Death: Blood Transfusion” is perversely enjoyable in its necromantic way.

-- David C. Nichols

“Urban Death: Blood Transfusion,” ZJU Theatre Group, 4850 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. 8:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Ends Oct. 28. Adult audiences. $10. (818) 402-4120. Running time: 55 minutes.

Miller’s reach is tested in ‘Broken’

November 1938. In Germany, Jewish shop owners are being brought to their knees, literally, as Nazi storm troopers smash the windows of their stores and then force them to scrub sidewalks with toothbrushes. Across the Atlantic in Brooklyn, Sylvia Gellburg (Diedra Celeste), obsessed with news from Germany, has developed a mysterious paralysis in her legs. Her repressed husband (Robert Picardo) seeks help from a doctor (Tom Ormeny), who believes Sylvia’s condition is purely psychological, a reaction to her deeply troubled marriage. But in a world drifting toward Holocaust, is Sylvia’s hysteria any more pathological than her fellow American Jews’ refusal to acknowledge what Kristallnacht portends?

Written late in Arthur Miller’s career, “Broken Glass” raises uncomfortable questions but lacks the transcendent power of the dramatist’s earlier works. As the play lurches awkwardly from a “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” column to an indictment of assimilationist values, the story feels schematic rather than self-propelling, more a platform for Miller’s obsessions with capitalism, gender and Jewishness than Sylvia’s authentic journey of self-realization.

The Victory Theatre Center production, ably directed by Shira Dubrovner, plays out on a small single set depicting several locations, and the resulting aura of claustrophobia serves the piece. As the unhappily married pair, Celeste and Picardo register palpable anguish, but you wish they were appearing in one of Miller’s more convincing efforts. “Broken Glass” wants to be about too much, and thereby ends up saying very little.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“Broken Glass” The Victory Theatre Center, 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. on Sundays. Ends Dec. 3. $20-28. Contact: (818) 841-5421. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

For a general, a fateful choice

Glendale has a new theater in the Luna Playhouse, and its professional company shows promise, with encouraging multicultural aims. The functional space, a semi-arena enveloped in a circular curtain, has real potential, and designers Henrik Mansourian (lighting) and Mark Anthony Goebel (sound) make the most of it. However, “Thirst,” author Lilly Thomassian’s nervously serious parable about a general torn between his daughter and the Djinns in ancient Ur, is a parched inaugural event.

Written in post-Grecian style with a chorus of women and loads of internecine strife, “Thirst” concerns Orad (Jonaton Wyne), a commander in the desert city of Sabzaar. When his treasured daughter Assia (Anais Thomassian) kisses her beloved Malek (Matthew Dorio) at the well of the Djinns, chaos ensues.

Echoing the biblical tale of Jepthah, Orad must choose between Assia’s life and the survival of Sabzaar. This, and Orad’s long-kept secret, understandably dismays wife Madara (Helen Duffy) and son Eris (Joseph Le Mieux).

Although director-designer Maro Parian supplies wonderful costumes, his pacing is sluggish and his sincere cast is as variable as the unbelievably straight-faced script. Playwright Thomassian has a vivid gift for poetic description, but her narrative sags beneath dialogue that suggests a Cecil B. DeMille epic, minus the camp, and at times only politeness prohibits unintended laughter.

At one point, Madara recalls meeting Orad -- “I held my breath, dizzy and amazed. I’ve been holding my breath ever since.” Regrettably, that typifies “Thirst,” which succumbs not from drought but from lack of theatrical oxygen.

-- D.C.N.

“Thirst,” Luna Playhouse, 3706 San Fernando Road, Glendale. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends Nov. 4. $20. (818) 500-7200. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.