Human against all odds

There’s this niggling problem with Ionesco. Over the decades, interpreters approach his texts with an increasingly misplaced reverence that can be stultifying.

Not so Frederique Michel, whose staging of “Rhinoceros” at City Garage invests Ionesco’s absurdist classic with a heightened sense of whimsy. From the hilarious opening scene in which the actors frolic about to infectiously Gallic music, we realize we’re in for a romp.

The dun-colored sets of Charles A. Duncombe’s sunlit production design provide an unobtrusive backdrop for the play’s human cartoons, who move about in a sort of group bustle. The exception to the general purposefulness is Berenger (Troy Dunn), the hapless everyman who recurs in several of Ionesco’s plays. A shambling boozer with “loser” written all over him, Berenger wanders through the crisply syncopated scenes with a telling lack of direction. But when his fellow townspeople transform into rampaging rhinoceroses, Berenger refuses to follow the herd and capitulate to conformity.

Of course, Berenger’s heroic inflexibility is the point of the play, a veiled parable of the Nazi scourge. When all about him are becoming beasts, Berenger remains defiantly human.

Dunn, who played Agamemnon and Pentheus in City Garage’s “Three by Mee” trilogy, gives a serviceable performance here but seems more comfortable cast in a heroic mold than as the comically perplexed Berenger. But plenty of requisite twinkle is provided by the engaging cast, especially David E. Frank as Berenger’s supposedly iconoclastic co-worker Botard, who succumbs to the prevalent plague in short order, and Justin Davanzo as the Logician, whose mind-bogglingly circuitous arguments get some of the production’s biggest laughs.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Rhinoceros,” City Garage, 1340 1/2 4th St. (alley), Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 5:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 15. $20. (310) 319-9939. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Feeling every punch he takes

“Requiem for a Heavyweight” is the “Death of a Salesman” of the prizefighting world, as powerful today as when the Rod Serling teleplay first aired in 1956.

At a tiny North Hollywood theater, Bob Rusch delivers a performance that in every way lives up to the heavyweight’s nickname: “Mountain.” Even when released from boxing gloves, Rusch’s hands remain curled into fists, indicating the many years they’ve spent inside the leather. Years back, Mountain was a serious title contender, but after 111 fights, he’s on the ropes.

“What did I do wrong?” he asks after losing his latest bout. “You aged,” his manager replies.

Thereafter, the boxer walks around with the world’s weight slumping his shoulders. But on those rare occasions when he rises to his full height, watch out, because he’s still got some fight left in him.

Ken Butler, as the manager, maintains a hard-bitten exterior that is meant to hide guilt (he’s betrayed Mountain) and fear (he faces imminent ruin).

Worry nevertheless sneaks past the edges of Butler’s iron mask, letting us know the guy’s not a total monster, at least. When the emotions finally break loose, the audience is seated close enough to see tears welling in the actor’s eyes. (Trivia alert: Butler happens to have been a producer of a quick-to-close 1985 Broadway “Requiem” starring John Lithgow.)

Not everyone in the SkyPilot company’s cast of 14 is well matched to his or her part, and the set, though it moodily evokes the ‘50s, is plywood-thin and pretty much two-dimensional. Even so, the production, tautly directed by Eric Johnson, is sending theatergoers out the doors with telltale wetness on their cheeks.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“Requiem for a Heavyweight,” T.U. Studios, 10943 Camarillo St., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends June 24. $15. (800) 838-3006. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Mordant musings of a poet-musician

“Image is nothing. Thirst is everything.” What writer-performer Malcolm-Jamal Warner thirsts after is self-expression, which drives “Love & Other Social Issues” at the Assistance League Playhouse. If the contours of this poetry-jam session by the actor we saw grow up on “The Cosby Show” are sometimes sketchy, there is nothing ephemeral about Warner’s riveting talent, or what he has to say.

“Love” begins casually, with a sizzling number by Warner’s jazz-funk band Miles Long, in which he plays bass alongside Isaac Agyeman, Jeff Byrd, James “D.C.” Wilson and L. Young. The dreadlocked star takes to the apron for his introductory gambit, “Babbling Insanity,” and an unmistakable vibe of authenticity grabs the house.

Unfolding through three sections -- “Thoughts & Images,” “Women” and “Transitions” -- the show reveals Warner as a gifted wordsmith with a ripe wit, lyrical acuity and sharp, un-PC intent. His interpretive technique is equally impressive. The comic chops are a given, but the intensity with which Warner assails the “never-ending cycle of black self-hate” displays mature range and depth.

And his immediacy -- whether slyly inviting a female attendee on stage for a romantic ode or bemoaning inner-city artists who betray their roots for bling -- is remarkable. This, together with the rocking fusion combo, leaves the last sitcom traces of Theo Huxtable in the suburban dust.

Occasionally, “Love” rambles a bit, the “Women” section nearly doubling back on itself. Interstitial moments might be tighter, and, even with Jonathan Klein’s fine lighting, the staging recalls an unusually pert school assembly. Yet it allows director Denise Dowse to zero in on Warner’s mordant musings, which is how this commanding poet-musician connects so incisively with us.

-- David C. Nichols

“Love & Other Social Issues,” Assistance League Playhouse, 1367 N. St. Andrews Place, Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 1. $22.50-$37.50. (323) 960-7784. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

A tour de force one-man show

Barring the occasional family trust fund, most artists rely on bread-and-butter jobs to put food on the table while awaiting employment in their given craft. The work is often low-paid and undignified, but whether the show goes on or not, the groceries must be bought.

Sam, the protagonist of Becky Mode’s “Fully Committed,” is a wage slave with a vengeance. An aspiring actor who mans the reservations line at New York’s hottest restaurant, Sam fields a barrage of phone calls from some of the city’s most obnoxiously entitled personages, at the same time coping with urgent communiques from restaurant staffers, from the hostess at the front desk to the sadistically prickly owner-manager.

A tour de force opportunity for the right actor, “Committed” is a one-man show with a cast of dozens. Gangly, game and humorously frenetic, Ted Escobar takes on the challenge in the play’s current production at the Hermosa Beach Playhouse, playing 40-odd characters. Under the solid direction of Stephanie A. Coltrin, Escobar rises to the occasion, splendidly.

The show is set at Christmastime, but a thin string of twinkling Christmas lights only emphasizes the gloom of Christopher Beyries’ fittingly spartan set, the grim and cluttered storeroom where Sam works. A blur of constant motion, Sam is an island of amiability amid a sea of swirling egos. But this downtrodden worm is about to turn. During the course of one particularly grueling shift, Sam makes the transition from submission to self-reliance, a cheering conversion that comes just in time for an upbeat ending.

An amusing romp, “Fully Committed” may not stick in the memory after the final curtain, but Escobar’s crisply paced performance is unflaggingly diverting. For artists who serve both the muse and the bank account, this show could prove dangerous, the final straw that makes them tear their time cards into tiny bits.

-- F.K.F.

“Fully Committed,” Hermosa Beach Playhouse, 710 Pier Ave., Hermosa Beach. 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Additional show June 10, 7 p.m. Ends June 10. $35-$50. (310) 372-4477. Running time: 1 hours, 10 minutes.

Shattering a stifling silence

“Dusk,” being given its world premiere at the GTC Burbank, is an issue play with a poetic soul.

Its title is a reference to one character’s favorite time of day, when you don’t know “which is going to win, light or darkness.” Playwright James McLindon sets his tale at a metaphoric dusk between renewal and despair.

The action unfurls just after Easter of 2000, in a Cambridge, Mass., apartment occupied by Marie (Jane Macfie), her mother (Patricia Place) and an assortment of well-worn furnishings.

Nana, as the mother is known, spends much of each day addressing the empty armchair once occupied by her husband. Marie is widowed too, but the death she just can’t get over is that of her son, who turned to alcohol, drugs, prostitution and, finally, suicide after being molested by a priest.

On a day when the family’s lawyer is negotiating with Catholic Church officials, the women are paid a visit by Father Terrence (Robert Dionne). He’s Marie’s nephew and Nana’s grandson, but since he works closely with the bishop (Jerry Hoffman) most directly involved in the case, he probably shouldn’t be spending the day with the other side. This and a couple of bombshell disclosures are motivated more by plot necessity than by logic, but director Kevin Cochran and his actors make everything seem a consequence of one family’s need to shatter a stifling silence.

Macfie makes Marie even-tempered and open-hearted, even as grief presses down with an almost literal weight. It’s a nicely modulated performance, but the truly irresistible force on this stage is Place’s playful, resilient Nana. She helps to lighten the somberness as McLindon pushes ahead with a topic that has become part of the national conversation in the news, in private discussion and, as evidenced by “Doubt” and a growing number of similar examples, in the theater.

-- D.H.M.

“Dusk,” GTC Burbank, 1111-B Olive Ave., Burbank. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends June 23. $30; $25 online. (818) 238-9998. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.