Humor shines through

Loosen your Borscht Belt, it’s going to be a gag-rich evening. Barney Miller turns in his badge for showbiz in the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble’s uneven but surprisingly affecting revival of Neil Simon’s “The Sunshine Boys.”

Modeled on the real-life comic team of Gallagher and Shean, Willie Clark (Hal Linden) and Al Lewis (Allan Miller) are vaudeville veterans whose 43-year onstage sync has been matched only by an intense mutual dislike. When Clark’s agent and nephew (Eddie Kehler) wants to reunite the duo for a variety special, the two prepare like it’s a shootout at the Oy Vey Corral.

Director Jeffrey Hayden, himself a veteran of live television, paces his cast with confidence, if not always subtlety. Linden, in excellent voice at age 77, plows through the evening with an impressively grumpy vigor. Miller has less to do, but his benign shrugs are a wry study in passive aggression. Jackee Harry gives a brief, delicious turn as Linden’s nurse.

Simon’s play is a kind of comic steeplechase, a series of hurdles designed to elicit laughter, often regardless of story. (Doctor: “What did your father die from?” Patient: “My mother.”) The jokes may be hoary, but they’re bulletproof.

The production could be sharper, particularly in terms of characterization; there’s a generic quality to the proceedings that keeps the show from achieving its full comic bite. Still, there’s an undeniable pathos to Simon’s portrait of old-timers. In a way the play, like the careers of these two men who lived for their work, is over too soon, and the last scene feels as true and bittersweet as any Chekhovian farewell.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“The Sunshine Boys,” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Call for exceptions. $25-$30. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours.

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One-night stand, lifetime of change

“Nothing is enough,” goes one repeated motif in “A Beautiful View.” The double implications of the phrase are deliberate. In its West Coast premiere at Son of Semele theater, Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor’s seriocomic trek across the intangibles of love uses slight means to count for more than their sum.

On its surface, “A Beautiful View” is an experimental exercise. With the house lights still up on the stripped-back space, a woman enters, sets a CD player at center, mimes a “Howdy” gesture and exits. A second woman appears, staring at the boom box, as the first returns with two camp chairs. It’s Ionesco lite, as they exchange enigmatic comments and note our presence. Then the lights black out and the double-sided narrative begins.

MacIvor is a genuine iconoclast, and his craft runs deeper than the exposed elements suggest. Two women, both camping aficionados, meet while shopping for tents. Neither identifies as gay, yet their attraction results in one night together. That encounter informs their choices for 20 years, as the back-and-forth account evolves into a reverie on how we revise our histories, ending on a note of quiet tragicomedy.

Under Don Boughton’s smooth direction, lighting designer Brandon Baruch lands his crucial cues, from suddenly raised house lights to a starry sky overhead, and Ryan Poulson’s sound design and compositions are evocative.

As the two protagonists, Sarah Boughton (the director’s daughter) and CeCe Pleasants are captivating. Boughton’s physicality and angular way with a line suit her adventurous character, while Pleasants attacks the more reflective role with a nervy spontaneity that wouldn’t shame Mary Louise Parker. Their unforced work amounts to a tandem tour de force, and though “A Beautiful View” is pointedly specialized, it is a lovely sight to see.

-- David C. Nichols

“A Beautiful View,” Son of Semele theater, 3301 Beverly Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Ends April 26. $15. (800) 838-3006. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

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‘Tracers’ revival gets bogged down

The Vietnam War drama “Tracers” was a landmark production at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, where it opened in 1980 to acclaim and played for nine months before moving to New York’s Public Theater.

Now regarded as something of a contemporary classic, “Tracers” has lost little of its popularity or sense of anger over the years. Even in an unsuccessful production like the revival now at the Little Victory Theatre in Burbank, the play’s indignation manages to blast through like a cluster bomb.

“Tracers” tells the story of a group of veterans as they recall time spent in the jungles of Vietnam. The play conjures a hellish basic-training scenario in which a drill sergeant (Trent Hopkins) beats the humanity out of his grunts through physical punishment and an abundance of swearing. The platoon soon ships out to battle, where they must learn to confront each other’s neuroses before they can fight the Viet Cong.

The actors of the Gangbusters Theatre Company play the soldiers with passionate conviction. The nominal leader is an African American soldier nicknamed Dinky Dau (Romel Jamison), who strikes up a friendship with the newest recruit, a motor-mouth Italian American kid (James Thomas Gilbert) from Brooklyn. Other draftees include a Hermann Hesse-reading hippie (Christian Levatino), a Black Panther activist (Chris Erric Maddox) and a biker type who looks like Dennis Hopper (Matt Mann).

Credit should go to the cast for making their archetypal characters’ anger feel genuine and animalistic. But the production undermines their hard work by failing to locate a consistent style. Leon Shanglebee’s staging veers between ultra-naturalistic scenes of male bonding and weirdly poetic free associations.

Written by John DiFusco and several other Vietnam veterans who drew from their war experiences, “Tracers” doesn’t have a strong authorial voice and often feels episodic. This revival exacerbates the play’s weaknesses by indulging in a languorous rhythm. By the conclusion, an overwhelming sense of battle fatigue has set in for the soldiers and the audience as well.

-- David Ng

“Tracers,” The Little Victory Theatre, 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank. 8 p.m. Fridays through Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 20. (818) 841-5422. Running time: 2 hours.