Ibsen in a 1950s ‘House’

Henrik Ibsen meets Douglas Sirk in the Luna Playhouse’s gripping “A Doll House.” This fine adaptation of Ibsen’s drama moves the action to the 1950s and envisions its protagonist, Nora Helmer, as a repressed suburban housewife. In a marvelous performance, Georgan George probes Nora’s complexity with searchlight intensity and ruthless precision.

Using a translation by Rick Davis and Brian Johnston, the production moves at a brisk pace. Nora is a compliant wife who lives under the benevolent tyranny of her husband, Torvald (Jonaton Wyne), a wealthy banker. On Christmas Eve, an unexpected visit threatens to destroy her sense of domestic order. One of Torvald’s employees, a shady fellow named Nils Krogstad (Sila Agavale), fears he will be laid off and tells Nora he’ll reveal a secret about her past that could destroy her marriage.

Director Aramazd Stepanian heightens the artificiality of the acting and the design, giving the story a melodramatic sweep. The ‘50s setting feels inspired by Sirk’s Hollywood weepies (“All That Heaven Allows,” “Written on the Wind”), especially in its bright colors, deep shadows and overall atmosphere of loss and regret.

Updating the play also allows the production to address the issues of race (Wyne is African American) and nascent feminism. Nora’s emotional awakening in the third act carries overtones of the coming women’s liberation movement. Unfortunately, the production leaves these themes dangling for the most part -- quietly hinted at but never fully developed.

George’s performance as Nora brings astonishing clarity to a famously difficult role. The actress is called on to play meek, coquettish, nervous, angry and ultimately liberated, and she cuts a clean path through this thicket of emotions. Her remarkably assured portrayal makes “A Doll House” worth revisiting.

-- David Ng

“A Doll House,” Luna Playhouse, 3706 San Fernando Road, Glendale. 8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Ends Jan. 19. $15 to $20. (818) 500-7200 or www.itsmyseat.com. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

There’s something up his sleeve

A New York native who has recently relocated to the West Coast, Michael Gutenplan is a young magician with a charmingly low-key personality and considerable skill that he displays in “Extraordinary Deceptions: A Magical Holiday Extravaganza,” now in a limited holiday engagement at the Powerhouse.

The somewhat low-tech hourlong show, conceived and performed by Gutenplan and directed by Ryan Dixon, is not so much extraordinary as it is pleasantly diverting. The emphasis here is on close-up magic, and Gutenplan’s expertise with cards is evident. However, most impressive are his “mind-reading” abilities. At one point, he solicits an audience member to pick a number at random from the Los Angeles white pages, then proceeds to produce the number from a sealed envelope that he had previously handed to another spectator.

It’s all cheery, festive and fun. For his penultimate trick, Gutenplan catches a zooming paint ball in his mouth, a variation on the old sideshow stunt of catching a bullet in one’s teeth. (California law prohibits real firearms on stage.) It’s an intriguing effect that makes the show’s finale, in which Gutenplan saws a woman audience volunteer in half, seem a bit anticlimactic. No matter. “Extraordinary Deceptions” may not have the razzle-dazzle of some bigger-budget magic shows, but it is an enjoyable entertainment for the entire family.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Extraordinary Deceptions: A Magical Holiday Extravaganza,” Powerhouse Theatre, 3116 2nd St., Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Fridays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Dec. 30. $25. (310) 396-3680, Ext. 3. www.powerhousetheatre.com. Running time: 1 hour.

The doctor is in . . . stitches

Audiences who endorsed “Tsuris,” playwright Mark Troy’s previous hit at the Sidewalk Studio Theatre in Toluca Lake, may go gaga for his latest offering, “Paging Dr. Chutzpah.” This lewd and lunatic study of a predatory Park Avenue shrink drop-kicks the Catskills style into a place somewhere between Woody Allen and Hooters.

The pro-forma contours of designer Marc Haupert’s agreeable set portend a saucy boulevard romp centering on ethically challenged Dr. Lester Oronofsky (Marq Del Monte). Lester’s penchant for seducing patients has left him reluctantly abstinent, relentlessly nattering and clueless about the torch that receptionist Myrna (an adept Alycia Tracy) carries beneath her severely tailored suit.

After pole dancer Kitty Gypsy (Heidi Fielek) inspires Lester to ever more one-liners, he reanimates his career by studying this ultra-flexible subject while staying celibate, in search of a groundbreaking treatise.

Enter obsequious Herman (Danny Lippin), the post-slacker nephew whom Lester mentored and now an aspiring psychiatrist himself. Enter repressed Bonnie (the fearless Colette Freedman), Herman’s fiancee and a fan of Lester’s academic output. Enter countless twists of narrative craziness that director Lynne Moses’ cast pitches at levels less Borscht Belt than Borscht Bustier.

Troy has a talent for outsized patter, and he certainly layers on the situational dynamics. These approach uproar whenever the women drive the plot, with Freedman’s trek from Latin-spouting librarian to insatiable dominatrix the single funniest element.

Such hysteria comes and goes. Del Monte is not exactly a natural farceur, more functional schnook than randy Lothario. As the opportunistic Herman, Lippin engages in edgy antics that seem almost from another play, and the sentimental reversals of the climax are baldly contrived. Though “Paging Dr. Chutzpah” will surely draw crowds, in the final analysis it is a pasteboard burlesque.

-- David C. Nichols

“Paging Dr. Chutzpah,” Sidewalk Studio Theatre, 4150 Riverside Drive, Toluca Lake. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Jan. 26. Adult audiences. $20. (818) 558-5702. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

A bare-bones ‘Crucible’

“The Crucible” seems more trenchant than ever. Arthur Miller’s classic allegory about the Salem witch trials of 1692 has outlived its most famous analogy -- the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings of the 1950s -- to retain its biting look at the politics of hysteria in ways that still chillingly apply.

Its timeliness just barely sustains the rough-and-ready staging by Gregory Sabatino Productions that will play at the Matrix through Sunday. Though the spirit of director Laura Henry’s stripped-back take is willing, its flesh is weak when it isn’t eccentric.

Against a whitewashed back wall, the bare-bones pieces that earn designer Tiffany Williams a dubious set credit suggest that text will be paramount. The opening scene in the home of the Rev. Samuel Parris (Charles Dougherty) has the studied quality of a conservatory reading. Once vindictive Abigail Williams (Ashley Bell) faces off with former lover John Proctor (Jeffrey King), then spurs her fellow teenagers to start accusing their neighbors, everything shifts into grandstanding pyrotechnics and rarely calms down thereafter.

Henry overstresses beats to the extent that few actors cross the stage when they can sweep around it, or merely declaim when they can shout, yet static tableaux persist. When the Rev. John Hale (Brian Silverman) prays over Betty Parris with the inflections of a modern televangelist, it is unintentionally risible. There are many such moments from the huge cast, which is as stylistically diffuse as designer Jennifer Dozier’s “Knickerbocker Holiday” costumes.

Colleen Flynn’s heartfelt Elizabeth Proctor is the standout, recalling the emerging Marcia Gay Harden. Otherwise, Liz Sroka’s vivid Mary Warren, Drew Snyder’s understated Francis Nurse and Patrick Mulvihill’s feisty Giles Corey are the most successful at surmounting the pitfalls of this reflexively overwrought, visually barren revival.

-- D.C.N.

“The Crucible,” Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Ave., 8 p.m. today and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. Ends Sunday. $25. (323) 960-7712. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.