Three sisters and a funeral in ‘Memory’

Parenthood is the dubious gift that keeps on giving in “The Memory of Water,” Shelagh Stephenson’s funny, tragic and achingly eloquent portrait of three sisters returning to their home in northern England for their mother’s funeral.

In Jenny Sullivan’s handsome staging for Santa Barbara’s Ensemble Theatre Company, pitch-perfect performances quickly differentiate the personalities of Stephenson’s dysfunctional siblings and draw us into the charged eruptions that shatter their uneasy truces.

Stephanie Zimbalist solidly anchors the piece as caustic, imperious Mary, an accomplished doctor whose career ambition has displaced other fulfillment. Her tentative human contact is typified in a dead-end love affair with a married colleague, Mike (Mitchell McClean).

Insecure and resentful of Mary’s success, the more domesticated Teresa (Laurie Walters) runs a flaky health-supplement business with her husband (Leonard Kelly-Young). As the narcissistic, self-destructive rebel Catherine, Emma-Jane Huerta exudes hilariously tacky charisma mixed with touching vulnerability.

Keenly observed comic details skillfully balance the grim backdrop, particularly in the razor-sharp first act. But in overly indulging the broodier second half, pacing and energy flag.

Still the play’s resonant central metaphor ironically taps one of Teresa’s crank homeopathic theories that even when separated from complex solutions, water molecules can retain trace properties -- or, in popular bumper-sticker parlance, if it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.

-- Philip Brandes

“The Memory of Water,” Alhecama Theatre, 914 Santa Barbara St., Santa Barbara. 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 11. $25-37. (805) 962-8606. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Celebrating moms in song and dance

In “Mommy! Mommy! The Musical! ... Musical!,” television scribe Elin Hampton shapes modern motherhood into something like revue-as-play date. A delicious cast, swell Gerald Sternbach tunes and Kay Cole’s capable staging carry this tribute to the maternal terrain, though concept and book need retooling.

The premise juggles Erma Bombeck-ish insights and the self-help pap that narrator Brian Beacock spouts at the outset. Deceptively sunny Cydney (Elizabeth Lauren Hoffman) always wanted to be a mommy. Career-driven Bess (Terri Homberg-Olsen) got a midlife surprise. Lesbian partners Yvette (Heidi Godt) and Mare (Michelle Azar) adopted Chinese twins. Their common bond: anxiety, as “Nothing Prepared Me” informs us.

“Mommy!” henceforth plays hopscotch between how our culture views moms and how moms view themselves. Hampton makes witty observations amid her agreeable lyrics, and composer Sternbach responds with panache, his noteworthy melodies gracefully scored for keyboards, cello and percussion.

Director-choreographer Cole uses the spare designs, especially Lisa D. Lechuga’s building blocks and revolving flats, and strong-voiced players, well blended under Brian Murphy’s music direction, to unfussy advantage. Hoffman nicely contrasts with dry, droll Homberg-Olsen. Godt is wonderful, and Azar builds easy presence to touching acuity in Act 2.

That this owes more to Azar’s skill than Hampton’s libretto is the main liability. Act 1, a diverting vaudeville, works chiefly as variations on a theme. Subsequent twists, much like the involvement of Beacock’s tireless functionary, feel arbitrary, short on foreshadowing and point.

Still, the same audiences who supported “Bark!” and “Menopause!” will surely scamper to “Mommy! Mommy! The Musical! ... Musical!”

-- David C. Nichols

“Mommy! Mommy! The Musical! Musical!,” Hudson Backstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 1. $30. (323) 960-7774 or www.plays411.com/mommy. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

Jest a whole lotta sound ‘n’ fury

The Scotland of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” a land of thanes and heaths, is swapped for America’s Old West, more commonly associated with cattle barons and scrubby deserts, in Arne Zaslove’s staging of the play for Open Fist.

It’s a captivating concept, wherein Macbeth becomes a black-hatted gunslinger. He inhabits a largely lawless world in which firearms are drawn whenever footsteps approach and where death is dispensed in ruthless ways. Shakespeare’s words are often chewed, like wads of tobacco, in a movie-western style drawl.

Yet even with so much atmosphere working for it, the presentation is listless, desiccated and, from time to time, outright boring. That’s because even the mostly obviously talented actors here, including Adrian Sparks and Lisa Glass as Lord and Lady Macbeth, rarely connect with the emotion in Shakespeare’s text, which is hard to fathom, given that this story -- about a murderous lust for power that further mutates into paranoia -- seethes with big-screen-epic-worthy passions.

The action unfolds on a wood-plank set (designed by Meghan Rogers) that calls to mind the raw, simple structures of the frontier. Cinematic lighting (by Cricket Sloat) paints mood onto each scene, especially the high-noon intensity that blisters the story’s climactic showdown.

Intriguingly, the servants in the Macbeth household are mostly Native Americans who grimly witness the horrors committed by the interlopers in their land. This is but one indication that a lot of thought has been devoted to this production. Now, if with each additional performance the actors continue to shape themselves to their roles, perhaps one day the fit will be like that of well-broken-in cowboy boots.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“Macbeth,” Open Fist Theatre, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 7. $20, except Sundays, pay what you can. (323) 882-6912, www.openfist.org. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

‘Rocket’ sputters on the launchpad

Anyone who grew up in the post-Jetsons era can sympathize with “Rocket Men” writer-director Clyde Hayes’ fascination with the unfulfilled 20th century dream of personal flying jetpacks. It is a point of bitter disappointment that we’re still not commuting to work through the skies instead of slogging through earthbound traffic.

Unfortunately, this lofty theme fails to reach liftoff in Hayes’ muddled new caper about con artists scheming over a long-lost rocket belt prototype, the RB005.

In Sky Pilot Theatre Company’s modest production, the story pits the flying device’s ostensible owner, Bert (Mark Irvingsen), a dirt-bag mechanic from Texas, against his former sleazy business partner (John Joyce), who wants to recoup his investment. Lured to the Valley for a meeting with a team of high-power publicists (Lyle Skosey, Kirsten Roeters and Chad Dossett), Bert is kidnapped and menaced with a power drill, pistol and stun gun unless he hands over the RB005.

Without regard for continuity or rationality, identities change as quickly as the upper hand in a meandering plot that feels made up as it goes along (the entrance of a karaoke chanteuse who’s also a notary public, Veleeta Dacosta) is a typical case in point.

Chronology is splintered through the insertion of filmed flashbacks, most of which could just as easily have been performed onstage.

A last-minute flip into a poetic reverie invoking the tragic myth of Icarus only adds to the incoherence. You know you’re in trouble when quoting Steve Miller Band lyrics surpasses the quality of the actual dialogue.

-- P.B.

“Rocket Men,” Sidewalk Studio Theatre, 4150 Riverside Drive, Burbank. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 25. $15. (800) 838-3006 or www.brownpapertickets.com. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.