Stuffing knocked out of ‘em

Harassed by “Daily Show” reruns, turkey leftovers or how much Steve Jobs will make off you this holiday season? Circle X offers the perfect theatrical antidote with “Love Loves a Pornographer,” Jeff Goode’s deeply silly, thoroughly enjoyable period satire on sexual hypocrisy now running at [Inside] the Ford.

Gary Smoot’s gorgeous Victorian drawing room set is bedecked floor to ceiling with gilt-framed oil paintings; carefully cultivated image -- and the undignified reality behind what we present to others -- is the target of Circle X Theatre’s witty romp.

Faintly successful novelist Lord Loveworthy (William Salyers) has invited his neighbor, literary critic and man of the cloth Miles Monger (Jim Anzide), and his beleaguered wife (Johanna McKay) for tea. The ostensible occasion is the return of the Loveworthys’ errant daughter, Emily (Kathleen Rose Perkins), who has just become engaged to an earl.

Of course, it’s actually extortion, adultery and dueling pistols that are to be served up with the crust-free cucumber sandwiches. Goode (“The Eight: Reindeer Monologues”) can tease the bejesus out of a comic premise, and his gleeful dismantling of the British gentry’s corseted mores spins into an unhinged anarchy that would please past masters Wilde and Coward.

Director Jillian Armenante paces the play like a fox hunt, and the actors jump on their cues with fevered relish. As Lady Lillian, wide-eyed Gillian Doyle raises startled hauteur to an art form, while McKay’s turn as the trembling, put-upon Mrs. Monger offers an object lesson in deferential but relentless scene theft. Sure, there are relevant themes here -- the wide stance of the morally smug, the cost of creative and marital stultification -- but the fun is the ride itself. As Lord Loveworthy urges his imminent son-in-law, “Speak freely . . . for you are very soon to be family and lose that luxury once and for all.” Happily, Goode and Circle X don’t seem to be settling down any time soon.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“Love Loves a Pornographer,” [Inside] the Ford at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays. No performances Dec. 23. Ends Jan. 20. $20 and $25. Contact: (323) 461-3673. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

-- Frida Kahlo, in living color

“My reputation as an artist will not coincide with the cult of my personality,” says the heroine of “Frida Kahlo.” True enough, and this 15th-anniversary staging of Ruben Amavizca Murua’s surreal collage about the iconic Mexican artist is intent on summoning up her creative core as much as exploring her eventful history. Thanks to stellar turns by Minerva Garcia as Kahlo and Richard Azurdia as husband Diego Rivera, “Kahlo” does both.

At times, the diary quotes, biographical data and symbolist elements play a shade more formally in Eve Muller and Liane Schirmer’s translation than they might in Murua’s Spanish text (performed on alternate weekends). But there’s admirable dramaturgy afoot, from the haunting opening tableau at Kahlo’s deathbed to the elliptical final image, aided by Richard Soltero’s inventive costumes and, certainly, the cast.

Other than her laser-beam eyes, Garcia only faintly resembles Kahlo. Yet her title portrayal, by turns rhapsodic and acidic, channels Kahlo’s essence to moving effect. Similarly, the vivid Azurdia, though hardly a behemoth, embodies Rivera with bravura technique, scaling the emotional top without falling over it.

Dina Jauregui’s sincerity humanizes Cristina Kahlo’s betrayal, and Arely-Lorena Araniva (alternating with Ingrid Marquez) gives Rivera’s archetypal mistress a comic bent that approaches “The Women.” Finally, there is the interstitial Judas figure that voices various key influences to illuminate “the two Fridas.” At the reviewed performance, writer-director Murua went on for Edwin Rivera in this role, and his hyperkinetic work was riveting.

Such gusto carries past some smudges in execution: a missed light cue here, a collegiate transition there. “The only thing I know,” Kahlo once said, “is that I paint because I need to.” The same logic applies to this resourceful, heartfelt invocation of her life and legacy.

-- David C. Nichols

“Frida Kahlo,” Frida Kahlo Theater, 2332 W. 4th St., L.A. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 6 p.m. Sundays. Performances in English: next Friday and Dec. 1-2. Performances in Spanish: today through Sunday, Dec. 6-9 and 13-16. Ends Dec. 16. $15. (213) 382-8133. Running time: 2 hours.

-- War rumbles in a ‘Hero’s’ mind

There’s a comfort level in viewing the work of playwright Luis Alfaro and director Jon Lawrence Rivera. Longtime collaborators, both are accomplished theatrical technicians who know how to get their point across.

Both Alfaro and Rivera are keen observers of working-class family dysfunction, with an emphasis on the minutiae of the everyday. At times, “Hero,” a world premiere by Playwrights’ Arena at Studio/Stage in Hollywood, is so deliberately minimalist that it borders on the negligible. However, the apparent insignificance masks epic concerns.

This production features two rotating casts, one Asian, one Latino. (The Asian cast was featured the evening of the reviewed performance.) The setting is South El Monte, where the ironically named Hero (Jin Suh), who injured himself falling off a truck in Iraq, is about to receive the keys to the city. Hero’s unearned apotheosis is a sore point with his Uncle (Dana Lee), an unheralded Nam vet who saw real action. Locked in his room, Hero entertains visits from his twin brother Junior (Rodney To), a quasi-peace activist. But Hero refuses to see his mother (Natsuko Ohama), a worn-down Department of Water and Power clerk wounded by her son’s rejection.

Set designer John H. Binkley and projection designer Ron Saito have rigged the ceiling over Hero’s bed as a screen for random film images -- a window into Hero’s tumultuous thoughts. Featured in both casts, amply proportioned Carla Jimenez is a riot as the rotund and slack-jawed siren who caroms between brothers with the supreme self-confidence of a deathless beauty.

Under Rivera’s apt direction, Alfaro fills his tiny canvas with thick, bitter humor -- but we sense that his comical, modest tale is prelude to impending tragedy.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Hero,” Playwrights’ Arena at Studio/Stage, 520 N. Western Ave., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Dec. 16. $20. (213) 627-4473. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

-- World powers in a ‘Grand Delusion’

Playwright and popular political blogger (Wild Democracy Ride) David Rock displays a keen sense of the outrageous in his ambitious world premiere “Grand Delusion” at Lost Studio. The play spoofs the events leading up to World War I, focusing on the fools and saber rattlers whose spectacular hubris turned an arguably minor crisis -- the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand -- into a world cataclysm.

Firmly based in fact, the play is a mix of historical and fictionalized characters, all of whom gather for a confab at the kaiser’s palace. The main promulgator of the impending mayhem is effete Count Rumpledorf (Timothy Omundson), an Austrian foreign minister determined to draw the megalomaniacal Kaiser Wilhelm (Kurt Fuller) into war. The kaiser’s estranged cousin, dithery Czar Nicholas (Xander Berkeley) sends his sage footman Podnov (Brad Raider) as an unlikely emissary for peace. Practical-minded French Gen. Fafou (Eric Stonestreet) is also anxious to avoid the conflict, as is the sultry Venetia (Amanda Detmer), a British noblewoman willing to lay down her life -- or whatever part of her is most persuasive -- to avert war.

Colbert S. Davis IV’s spot-on sound design perfectly underscores the general slapstick. Under the rollicking direction of Larry Biederman, the actors -- comic vets recognizable from screens large and small -- snap off their laugh lines with bawdy efficiency.

Reminiscent of “Dr. Strangelove” in tone, the piece is audaciously broad, and Rock certainly makes a timely point about how the ill-conceived agendas of fallible men can alter the course of world history. However, Rock doesn’t always make the distinction between the sweeping and the merely sprawling in his randomly plotted satire, which occasionally loses its thematic thrust in the widespread silliness.

-- F.K.F.

“Grand Delusion,” Lost Studio, 130 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends Dec. 15. $20. (323) 960-4441. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes

-- These ‘Lessons’ are all predictable

Two damaged souls find emotional catharsis by studying the Hebrew language in Wendy Graf’s sappy drama “Lessons.” Filled with wooden, barely speakable dialogue, the play would be unbearable if not for an energetic, multidimensional performance from Broadway and TV veteran Hal Linden (“Barney Miller”).

Linden plays Ben, a retired businessman who decides to take Hebrew lessons in preparation for the bar mitzvah he never had. His tutor, Ruth (Larissa Laskin), is a gifted linguist who has fallen on hard times. A shut-in and emotional basket case, she has renounced her Jewish faith, and just about everything else, it seems, following a traumatic incident that she refuses to talk about.

During one lesson, Ben is seen reading “Hebrew for Dummies.” The play often feels like an adaptation of that very textbook. Tedious conversations devoted to pronunciation, grammar and the proper way to hold Torah scrolls clog up the story line. For a play about language, “Lessons” proves surprisingly inept at conveying drama through the spoken word.

The direction by Gordon Davidson (founding artistic director of Center Theatre Group) makes the most of the small set. But not even his assured hand can tame the play’s screeching cliches.

Predictably, Ruth lets her guard down, allowing teacher and student to take steps toward a tentative friendship. Amid this clunky hokum, Linden’s performance stands out like a beacon of creative honesty, never playing the character for easy likability. His fully committed portrayal is a moment-to-moment pleasure to watch, filled with physical subtleties and comic wit. He even manages to impart some believability to the embarrassingly corny climax in which Ben reveals a long-repressed secret.

First produced in 2005, “Lessons” has undergone some revisions for its current incarnation. Clearly, a few more drafts wouldn’t hurt. The play concludes in an orgy of affirmational platitudes and mutual healing. What’s the translation for “Oy vey”?

-- David Ng

“Lessons,” Lee Strasberg Creative Center’s Marilyn Monroe Theatre, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Dec. 23. $32-$35. (323) 650-7777 or www.westcoastjewishtheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.