Castro looms in ‘Havana’

The Cuba of 1958 in Carlos Lacámara’s “Havana Bourgeois,” now at the Hayworth, looks like a Caribbean version of the cable TV series “Mad Men.” The advertising office of Luis Calvo and Associates hums with petty office politics and flirtations: unctuous Juan (Nick Ortega) kisses up to the boss (Ernesto Miyares), while a tight-skirted Margo (Jossie Thacker) sneaks off to hotels with him. Overlooked talent Alberto (David Michie) works away, hoping for better days and encouraging the black messenger boy, Manuel (Theodore Borders), to educate himself. The whole parade gets a running commentary from the sardonic Panchito (Tony Plana), an older gay illustrator who chases his morning coffee with a nip from his flask.

But as the crew tries to sell toothpaste and Standard Oil, a revolution is quietly on the march, soon to overwhelm every aspect of their accustomed world.

Lacámara’s absorbing time capsule captures the sense of everyday people surprised by history, and the story’s slow burn as Castro’s and cronies’ rise to power is chillingly measured. Director Jon Lawrence Rivera tracks mood shifts effectively, aided by strong production values. (The ever-reliable John Iacovelli created the vivid, lived-in agency setting.)

Yet “Havana’s” center feels slightly hollow. Michie offers a capable, reflective Alberto, but he’s in a bind: Lacámara has written a play about a decent man who keeps his head down until his very life is threatened, so the story’s momentum must be carried by the surrounding characters. In the end, this particular Havana bourgeois (and his wife, played by Jacqueline Piñol) remains a bit of a cipher. Nonetheless, the production registers as deeply felt. In the role of the impressionable Manuel, Borders conveys the sense of a young man afraid to examine the methods of the power surge that has liberated him from centuries of prejudice. And the veteran Plana, who’s been polishing his comedic timing on “Ugly Betty,” is effortlessly in command, dispensing wit and outrage with equal sting.

These performers embody the extremes of this passionate play, an elegy to the bad and good old days that Castro swept away.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“Havana Bourgeois,” The Hayworth Theatre, 2509 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 16. $20. Contact: (800) 838-3006 or www.thehayworth.com. Running time: 2 hours.

Gender-bending mind games

Director Frédérique Michel and production designer Charles A. Duncombe take on the obscurities of the late German playwright Heiner Müller in “Quartet,” Müller’s radically deconstructed adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” now at City Garage.

Michel and Duncombe have traversed Müller terrain before, most notably in their brilliant 2000 production of “MedeaText: Los Angeles/Despoiled Shore,” Müller’s cryptic take on the Medea legend.

Although Marc von Henning’s translation maintains plenty of epigrammatic zip, “Quartet” is far more austere and spare than “MedeaText.” The play opens with a startling visual -- a naked woman crucified on a towering cross. This “Player” (Mariko Oka) features prominently in the fantasies of the carnally voracious Vicomte de Valmont (Troy Dunn) and his partner in lubricity, the Marquise de Merteuil (Sharon Gardner).

Attended by another Servant/Player (David E. Frank), Valmont and de Merteuil engage in gender-bending games of a progressively cruel ilk. There is nudity, yes, and even simulated sex, but don’t expect titillation from these concupiscent charades. Müller seldom mentions sex without a graphic reference to death. These pre-Revolutionary French aristocrats, so deftly portrayed by Dunn and Gardner, are keenly aware of the impending deluge that will soon land them in the tumbrels. Until that final deliquescence, they will continue to “rub their hides” together -- soullessly and tragically.

Müller intended “Quartet” as a study on terrorism, but in Michel’s take, the emphasis is pointedly feminist, as it was in “MedeaText.” Under his sphinx-like inscrutability, Müller evinces a surprising empathy for his objectified female characters, as does Michel in her sympathetic enigmatic staging.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Quartet,” City Garage, 1340 1/2 Fourth St. (Alley), Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 5:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 23. $20. (310) 319-9939. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

A side of Alice never seen

Los Angeles is apparently on an “Alice in Wonderland” bender. The summer has already seen a kid-skewed Women’s Ensemble Theater edition and Karen Kay Woods’ “Dance of the Lemons,” an Alice-like journey through LAUSD lunacy. This weekend, the Troubie’s joyous “Alice in One-Hit-Wonderland” ends its Falcon Theatre run, while Blue13 Dance Company’s Indian-flavored “Paheliyan” assails the Ford Amphitheatre, and William Donnelly’s “Painted Alice” opens at Elephant Stageworks in September.

Among these many Lewis Carroll riffs popping up, “Alice in Wonderland Thru the Looking Glass” is probably the most outré version we shall see. This antic psychosexual conflation from Zombie Joe’s Underground is a neurasthenic exercise in presentational dementia.

Against designer Jana Wimer’s striking mural of a particularly morbid summer’s day, the scenario by co-directors Denise Devin and Zombie Joe dropkicks Alice’s great granddaughter (Jessica Amal Rice) into Wonderland-Thru-the-Looking-Glass (a casualty of downsizing). Here, she seeks to avenge her beloved, beheaded White Knight (Jackson Baker) by killing the chop-happy Queen of Hearts (Wimer).

Clad in designer Jeri Batzdorff’s frabjous costumes, the cast goes galumphing about to composer Christopher Reiner’s curdled score with erratic gloss and ample gusto. Jeffrey Grin is a wildly grinning White Rabbit, the mononymous Leopold a politically incorrect Cheshire Cat. Shaun Mathieu-Smith’s weepy-creepy Mock Turtle upends tradition after Charlie Romero’s shell-shocked Humpty Dumpty shatters it. Sarah Grace, Maria Olsen and Lucas Salazar finish the beamish slate.

Their pixilated perversity upholds the garage-absurdist ethic without quite raising the bar. The abridged script just barely develops its motifs, curiously skimpy on business, and it’s definitely not for children. Still, reasonably hip adults may well chortle at “Looking Glass,” a hallucinatory snicker-snack.

-- David. C. Nichols

“Alice in Wonderland Thru the Looking Glass,” ZJU Theatre Group, 4850 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. 8:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Ends Sept. 8. Adult audiences. $12. (818) 202-4120. Running time: 1 hour.

Corn syrup that goes down smooth

Orphaned as an infant, an ambulance driver in World War II and winner of a Tony and a Pulitzer, writer John Patrick was an old-school journeyman, a guy who cranked out 1,000 scripts for a 1930s radio show, cut Shakespeare for Helen Hayes, and adopted James Jones’ florid melodrama “Some Came Running” into a glorious celluloid opera for Frank Sinatra.

Now class-act Pacific Resident Theatre has mounted a beautifully produced revival of Patrick’s 1945 Broadway hit, “The Hasty Heart,” a male weepie that would make Greg Berlanti blush. At a British general hospital on the Assam-Burma front in 1944, a group of Allied wounded chase away the infernal bugs and thoughts of home with mosquito swat-offs and embroidering. (The impressive bamboo and wood-slatted set is by Robert Broadfoot.)

The play’s stocked -- and that is the word -- with a soldier from every English-speaking country: a Yank (Keith Stevenson), an Aussie (Nathan Mobley), a New Zealander (Michael Balsley) and a Brit (Ron E. Dickinson). They’re tended to by the efficient Sister Margaret (Lesley Fera, channeling Greer Garson perhaps a bit too smoothly) but must now bestow their own tender mercies. An unusual convalescent is about to arrive; he’s survived a battle wound but hasn’t been told he’s facing imminent kidney failure. The men are to make his last days as easy as possible. Enter Lachlen (Scott Jackson), a thorny Scot so stiff with pride he can barely walk. The boys try everything to win him over, smokes, candy, jokes, but Lachlen prefers to go it alone. Can the men bust through his shell before it’s too late?

Sentimental stuff, no doubt. But this is highly refined corn syrup, and it goes down like a charm because of fine ensemble work under Michael Rothhaar’s steady direction. Patrick’s band of decent brothers is just too darn likable to resist, and the playwright knows how to keep you hanging on every emotional turn. This “Heart” may be worn on a sleeve, but it has genuine dramatic muscle underneath.

-- C.S.

“The Hasty Heart,” Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Oct. 14. $25-$20. Contact: (310) 822-8392 or www.Pacific ResidentTheatre.com. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Laughs start early and keep coming

An assured committee effort turns the pages of “Groundlings Yearbook.” This latest mélange from L.A.’s premier improv troupe is less free-form than usual and often hilarious, laid out with edgy smarts.

Directed by Deanna Oliver, with a guest assist from Karen Maruyama, “Yearbook” unfolds in sketches and ad-lib segments, delivered by an alternating cast of writer-performers.

“Opening Remarks” sets the tone, with bone-dry Hugh Davidson alerting us to new corporate ownership. Physical comedy abounds, as when Stephanie Courtney and Nat Faxon’s “K.F.C.” borrows shamelessly from “A Night at the Opera,” or when “Musically Disinclined” pits Jim Rash’s tone-deaf husband against hand bells to save wife Edi Patterson.

“A Banner Day,” Mikey Day and Larry Dorf’s terrorist-video shoot, is as risky and hysterically funny as anything the company has ever done. Group cohesion carries even so-so bits, such as “The Epilogue,” a slap at “Grey’s Anatomy” excess, or “Come Away With Me,” a Starbucks employee’s worst nightmare marred by a dated final kicker.

Certain company mainstays cross the margins into stardom with breakout turns. Kent Sublette, whose straight-faced range rivals Rainn Wilson, goes from fawning “Book Chat” host, hawking Dorf’s algebra primer as though it were Updike, to spiky “Planetarium” guide beset by audience-wielded laser pointers.

“Yanni PSA” and “Final Product” find Andrew Friedman’s icon stymied by medical pronunciation. Steve Little is an absolute hoot, whether driving Steven Pierce’s teacher crazy with lewd queries in “Cats” or teaming with Faxon in the priceless songwriting seminar “Smash Hit.”

“Yearbook” may not be the ultimate academic achievement, but it’s a representative Groundlings volume.

-- D.N.

“Groundlings Yearbook,” Groundlings Theatre, 7307 Melrose Ave., L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays, 8 and 10 p.m. Saturdays. Ends Sept.22. $20. (323) 934-4747, Ext. 37. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.