The past lingers, sparkling

The conflict of “Music From a Sparkling Planet,” presented by West Coast Ensemble in its new Silver Lake home, pits youthful dreams against adult realities, using television as metaphor. Though the channels by which Douglas Carter Beane transmits his comic parable about three trivia-addled chums and their childhood TV icon are hardly deep, they’re endearing.

Fittingly, set designer Kurt Boetcher places a vintage console TV at center before a window-box collage of lamps and signage. This represents Greater Philadelphia, where Mylar-clad Tamara Tomorrow (the wonderful Kelly Lloyd) ruled afternoons in the ‘70s, spouting upbeat predictions -- “In the future, dogs will have full voting rights” -- between Japanese cartoons.

Cut to 2002, when Miller (David Kaufman), Hoagie (Chris Damiano) and Wags (Michael Spellman) play trivia games to stave off sinking expectations. These archetypes, whose dilemmas Norman Lear would recognize, register humanity in their adolescent memories of zaftig Tamara.

Between these musings, flashbacks relate how community theater advocate Sharon Pierce got the daytime gig. Approached by station manager Andy (John O’Brien), wary Sharon provides some of Beane’s brightest barbs: “Improvise? Do I look like I come from Chicago?”

Beane switches dials between their relationship and the trio’s quest to find Tamara today. Its sentimental outcome flirts with contrivance, yet director Richard Israel, a natural at heartfelt comedy, and his deft forces keep the gentle charm in focus.

Lisa D. Katz’s lighting, Marina Mouhibian’s costumes and Rebecca Kessin’s sound are inventive, and the actors are delightful. Lloyd, cast against type, is a find, and her colleagues hit their marks with flair. “Music From a Sparkling Planet” won’t change the world, but it casts a warm escapist glow.

-- David C. Nichols

“Music From a Sparkling Planet,” Lyric-Hyperion Theater, 2106 Hyperion Ave., Silver Lake. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 1. $22. (323) 906-2500, (800) 595-4849 or www.tix.com. Running time: 2 hours.

Despair behind closed doors

Based on Henry James’ “Washington Square,” Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s 1947 play “The Heiress” is one of those theatrical perennials that offers ripe opportunities for its lead actress. A 1949 film adaptation won Olivia de Havilland a best actress Oscar, while a 1995 Broadway revival gave Cherry Jones her first Tony.

In Circus Theatrical’s current production at the Hayworth, director Robert Cicchini reinvigorates this vintage tale, which features the ideally cast Alli Steinberg in the title role. Dedicated thrill-seekers may be disappointed by the play’s sheer stateliness, but fans of “Masterpiece Theatre” and indeed anyone who likes well crafted character studies will relish this carefully modulated and emotionally telling staging.

The action is set in 1850 in the posh Washington Square home of successful society doctor Austin Sloper (Robert Lesko), whose belle wife died giving birth to their ugly duckling daughter, Catherine (Steinberg). Egged on by Catherine’s meddlesome matchmaking aunt Lavinia (sprightly Judith Scarpone), the charming but improvident Morris Townsend (Mario Schugel) pays court to Catherine.

Convinced that Morris is a fortune hunter, Dr. Sloper forbids the match on pain of disinheritance. That, along with Morris’ painful jilting, triggers Catherine’s emotional transformation from docility to bitter defiance.

Alina Ivette’s sumptuous costumes reflect the elevated station of these privileged New Yorkers, for whom social conventions are of paramount importance. In this pre-Freudian period, emotional abuse was to be endured and sublimated, seldom spilled into a sympathetic ear.

That makes for a fascinating dynamic, and the actors work the subtexts of their material like the wily, classically trained hands that they are. Granted, Lesko was shaky on his lines opening weekend, and Cicchini occasionally leads Steinberg into excessively giddy displays that seem out of context, but those missteps are rare in this otherwise satisfying evening.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“The Heiress,” Circus Theatricals at the Hayworth, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Ends March 10. $20. (323) 960-1054, www

.circustheatricals.com. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

Secrets glimmer in the ‘Moonlight’

Andy is dying. The crusty old man lies muttering in bed, attended by a dryly supportive wife, waiting -- and waiting -- for his sons to come pay their respects.

It’s going to be a long night.

In the Lost Studio’s revival of Harold Pinter’s 1993 “Moonlight,” death is not the only undiscovered country; try adding the past, the self and family to the list of riddles. Just what did Andy (Mitchell Ryan) do to turn his sons (Russell Milton and Dan Cowan) into major escape artists? Does that wide-eyed mistress (Kathryn Harrold) belong to Andy, or to his wife (Cinda Jackson)? Then there’s the mystery of the apparently dead daughter, Bridget (Eliza Dean, excellent), who wanders Christopher Kuhl’s surreal set, which features two bedrooms separated by a barren tree and an upstage horizon line that teasingly promises blue skies.

On opening weekend, some of the cast, particularly Ryan, had yet to make the play his or her own, and there were moments when John Pleshette’s directorial hand felt less than definitive. Admittedly, “Moonlight” eludes easy approach: Written late in Pinter’s career, the 70-minute piece shrugs off conventional narrative in favor of brief scenes from the edge of a larger, uglier story -- the ale- and sex-soaked damage Andy has wrought. But just when this postmodern “Lear” threatens to stay stewed in its own cynical juices, Bridget appears again, a ghostly Cordelia whose dreamlike monologues give the play an unexpectedly wistful center.

It’s precisely these sudden shifts from brutal comedy to reverie that draw us closer to Pinter’s eerie illuminations: a beguiling glance at what we all fear losing, even as we never fully understand exactly what we have.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“Moonlight,” the Lost Studio Theatre, 130 S. La Brea Ave., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 1. $20. (800) 595-4849 or www.tix.com. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

The evanescence of a ghostly tale

Susan Hill’s novel “The Woman in Black,” adapted for stage by Stephen Mallatratt, is crafted from the elements of countless ghost stories. The spine-tingles come in the telling, and atmosphere is everything.

In Hill’s Victorian-era gotcha, a lawyer tries to exorcise a haunted past by reenacting it with the help of a professional actor. As the pair’s theatrics take on a chilling reality, suspense builds to terror pitch.

Or should.

Road Theatre Company heightened its masterful environmental staging a few years back with audiences seated in a no-comfort zone of artful decay.

Actors Co-op tries for a similar sense of immediacy, but despite some spot-on design elements and a capable cast -- Ben Hunter as Actor and Bruce Ladd as lawyer Kips -- suspense leaks through the cracks.

Renee Hoss-Johnson deepens the initially simple scenic design with scrim-concealed churchyard and house interiors, and Paula Higgins’ costumes add a solid period touch. But lighting designer Kent Inasy’s tasty ghostly shadows fail the spectral title character (uncredited), who is seen too clearly: Her rage looks like a hissy fit.

In Seth Hum’s essential sound design, a key plot point involving a child’s fatal accident was too muted opening night to elicit anything but confusion.

And with the audience seated onstage nearly in the round, it’s distracting to fear that the actors will trip over long legs and carelessly placed purses as they transform assorted bits of furniture into office, railway station, inn, study and other atmospheric settings.

Still, if their British accents waver a tad, Hunter and Ladd, directed by Gary Lee Reed, do a mostly bang-up job, Ladd morphing with conviction into varied eccentrics, Hunter’s Actor acquiring Kips’ persona to a dangerous degree (marred only by an agonized cry for Kips’ absent wife, Stella, so “A Streetcar Named Desire” it begs giggles).

-- Lynne Heffley

“The Woman in Black,” Actors Co-op, Crossley Theatre, 1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Also 2:30 p.m. March 10. Ends March 18. $30. (323) 462-8460. Running time: 2 hours.