Provocative war drama resonates

Intense, personal energy ignites the raw political statement at the center of “In the Heart of America” at the Knightsbridge Theatre. By embedding antiwar polemic in sharply observed poetry, Naomi Wallace’s surreal Gulf War drama draws unsettling parallels between past and present.

Wallace (“One Flea Spare”) is a distinctive stylist, and “In the Heart of America,” which premiered in London in 1994, has style to burn. Set in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, the narrative concerns two soldiers: Kentucky-born river boy Craver Perry (Geoffrey Hillback) and Remzi Saboura (Rafael Kalichstein), the Arab American comrade who didn’t return from Iraq.

Why he didn’t is what Remzi’s sister Fairouz (Samara Harris) seeks to uncover, a quest set against flashbacks to the Sabouras’ Atlanta childhood while tracing Craver and Remzi’s relationship amid sand and carnage. Woven throughout are Lue Ming (Tria Xiong), the spirit of bereaved Vietnam, and Boxler (Bruce Cronander), a gonzo officer possessed by Lt. William Calley.

The My Lai reference is the least subtle of Wallace’s metaphors, yet the analogy between eras holds firm, and director Jamil Chokachi and his cast pull it forward into now. Hillback and Kalichstein make an outstanding pair, fearless, unforced and touching. Harris exudes striking sensitivity, and Xiong and Cronander dive headlong into their savage archetypes.

Chokachi doesn’t always keep tempos and transitions apace with Wallace’s tonal swirl, which creates confusion at times. The staging, with Joseph Stachura’s lighting the chief source of atmosphere, is a shade too stark, and the final video of casualty statistics almost overstresses the moral. Yet “In the Heart of America” is impressive, as humanistic as it is provocative, and its committed players pack an emotional punch that counters occasional didactics.

-- David C. Nichols

“In the Heart of America,” Knightsbridge Theatre Los Angeles, 1944 Riverside Drive, L.A. 8 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Feb. 11. Adult audiences. $25. (323) 667-0955. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

‘Kabara Sol’ tackles good, evil

“Kabara Sol” is something of a departure from Ziggurat Theatre’s usual metaphysical turf. Rather than tapping ancient mythology for a story line, writer-director Stephen Legawiec’s modernist morality fable is set in a corrupt Asian harbor town in the 1930s, and plays more like a noir-ish thriller, albeit with existential overtones.

In what proves to be essentially a solo performance, Dana Wieluns assumes all three of the play’s speaking parts, with varying success. Wieluns, the choreographer responsible for Ziggurat’s distinctive movement style since the company’s inception, skillfully employs physicality to distinguish her characters. In the striking title role, a masked, zoot-suited sociopathic male crime lord who controls the region’s opium trade, she snakes ominously about the stage, effusively confessing Kabara Sol’s “infamy in its painstaking particulars.”

Underpinning the story of Kabara Sol’s nefarious exploits is an exploration of the duality of good and evil as filtered through enantiodromia, a principle of equilibrium espoused by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and refined by Carl Jung. Essentially, it holds that action begets a counterbalancing reaction, or as Kabara Sol sums it up: “Everything becomes its opposite.”

Here, the villain’s opposite is embodied in Wieluns’ sympathetic second character, the bespectacled, club-footed Genny the Boot, a maladroit do-gooder who heroically sets out to foil Kabara Sol’s schemes. The third wheel is an opium-addicted nightclub singer, for whom Wieluns musters a suitably damaged persona but lacks the pipes to sell the musical numbers. Unraveling the true relationships between these three identities takes some unexpected surreal turns, while a silent chorus strikes ritualistic poses with objects that will play a role in resolving the mystery.

-- Philip Brandes

“Kabara Sol,” [Inside] the Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Feb. 11. $20. (323) 461-3673 or www.fordamphitheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

Family’s demons surface in ‘Hurt’

As Mark Kemble would likely be the first to admit, his drama, “Bad Hurt on Cedar Street,” is a Jesus-Mary-Joseph play -- an oh so bittersweet tale of Irish-Catholic scrappers, stranded between the cross and the bottle, lurching from sadism to sentiment. Even the spirit of JFK gets his due in the production at the Greenway Court Theatre.

The action takes place in a shabby tenement in Providence, 2001. Elaine Kendall (an appropriately dish-ragged Lisa Richards) keeps the family body and soul jury-rigged by wrestling her mentally disabled adult daughter (Iris Gilad) into her clothes every morning, and slipping cigarettes and painkillers to her bed-ridden, Gulf War veteran son (Grant Sullivan).

Meanwhile, husband Ed (Stephen Mendillo), a Vietnam vet with his own demons, tinkers with his aquarium in the garage, dreaming of piranhas so desperate they feed on each other in blind lust for nourishment.

There are fine stretches of writing and a bold, affecting performance from Gilad. But if director Salome Jens can suss the truth of particular moments, she doesn’t harness much narrative momentum, and the characters’ anguish often saps the show.

Jens is also hampered by some weak performances and the sprawling set by James Eric and Victoria Bellocq. Though not exactly fresh, Kemble’s material insists on its own corny integrity, and deserves a denser, more sure-footed production.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“Bad Hurt on Cedar Street,” Greenway Court Theatre, 544 N. Fairfax Ave., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends Feb. 24. $22. (323) 655-7679. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

‘Tip-Toes’ revives Gershwin rarity

“Tip-Toes,” the second Broadway musical by George and Ira Gershwin, was a major hit when it opened in 1925. Yet it was never revived, and would have been lost to posterity were it not for the accidental discovery of Gershwin’s discarded orchestrations in a warehouse in 1982. After a painstaking restoration resulting in a 1998 concert recording, performance rights fell to Brian O’Halloran’s By George Productions, which specializes in early 20th century musical comedy.

The company’s staging at the Sherman Oaks Whitefire Theatre is thus the first complete “Tip-Toes” since its debut. Director-choreographer William Mead’s ambitious effort lacks the production resources to fully realize everything the piece can deliver -- it’s performed on an essentially bare stage (though A. Jeffrey Schoenberg’s costumes evoke a proper period feel), with O’Halloran on keyboards and John Harvey’s percussion supplying the entire score.

“Tip-Toes” is no “Porgy and Bess” -- its bouncy, upbeat songs serve only plot advancement with little in the way of inner character discovery. For Gershwin fans, though, it’s a welcome historical window into an emerging pair of genre-transforming talents.

The production’s authenticity extends to the original book, by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson, with all its goofy froth intact, as a trio of struggling New York vaudevillians invade Palm Beach, Fla. Hoping to find a moneyed husband for singer-dancer “Tip-Toes” Kaye (perky Kelly Stables, in an obvious casting nod to the petite Queenie Smith, who originated the role), her two uncles (Kyle Nudo and Richard Horvitz) fix her up with Steve, a shy glue factory heir (Matthew Reis). Toss in Steve’s imperious socialite sister (pitch-perfect Sandra Purpuro) and her philandering husband (Matt Kubicek), and the stage is set for romantic complications before the inevitable happy ending.

The cast sports actors who just passably sing and dance, with the standout exception of ensemble member Nikki Thomlinson, who excels at both. Not an ideal emphasis, given the cartoon characters and paper-thin plot versus the appeal of the Gershwin songs, but the effort captures enough potential to qualify “Tip-Toes” as a viable candidate for the Light Opera revival circuit.

-- Philip Brandes

“Tip-Toes,” Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Ends Feb. 18. $30. (800) 595-4849 or www.tix.com. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

A primitive caveman musical

Primitive man has discovered fire, learned to fashion crude tools and is grappling with the culinary art of cooking boar. What could possibly come next? Why, show business, of course.

Mankind’s development gets a rewrite in the Attic Theatre presentation of the musical “Ug.” It’s a Monty Python-like sketch stretched to full-length entertainment, with story advancement so predictable you can see it coming from eons away. But it’s good for a few laughs, and its cast is game.

A caveman tribal leader named Ug (played by Danny Blaylock with an appealing mix of swagger and thoughtful curiosity) stumbles upon posterity when he decides to act out, rather than simply tell, a story. Soon, he and his clan are caught up in the excitement, expressing their feelings in the jaunty, overlapping vocal lines of “Where I’ve Never Gone Before.”

Meanwhile, Ug’s pal Arg (David Barnathan) turns into Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins” as he struts about, thinking he has a chance with the tribe’s hottie (Devin Sidell) in “She’s Finally Out of Guys.” And Ug contemplates domesticity with his main squeeze (Michelle Maves) in the Carpenters-like ballad “Tingle,” performed, as all the songs are, to canned accompaniment.

As humankind discovers show business, it, of course, also rapidly happens upon creative differences, the lust for fame, the casting couch, and so on. Such eye-rolling obviousness detracts from this show written by Jim Geoghan (a TV writer whose previous theatrical forays have included “Only Kidding” and “Light Sensitive”), with music by the late TV composer Rick Rhodes and lyrics by Geoghan, Rhodes and his wife, Vivian.

The 10 singer-actors, under Jerry Kernion’s direction, deliver solidly, amid serviceable if low-rent trappings, but what this production needs more of -- though it might seem odd to say about a caveman story -- is sophistication.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“Ug,” Attic Theatre, 5429 W. Washington Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends Feb. 24. $25. (323) 525-0600. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.