They give all that they can

A lightning round of Meet My Family is always fun, especially when you’re a gay black man introducing his white boyfriend, and your sister greets you at the door with the latest religious tracts on “re-education.” In Paul Oakley Stovall’s out-loud and immensely appealing “As Much as You Can,” now at Celebration Theatre, Jesse (Stovall) brings his Swedish lover, Christian (Wes Ramsey), to a family wedding, running smack dab into the condescending homophobia of his brother (Andrew Kelsey) and the righteous disapproval of older sister Evy (Tonya Pinkins).

Stovall’s quicksilver irony and a charming cast (under Krissy Vanderwarker’s tight direction) keep things tart. As Jesse’s lesbian friend Nina, firecracker J. Nicole Brooks puts the evening in her back pocket and sashays right off with it. Tony Award winner Pinkins humanizes the Bible-thumping Evy, although “As Much” doesn’t feel like the ideal venue for her talents.

Even more than a plea for tolerance, the play offers a raucously hopeful view of home as a place you can always go back to -- if only to cream your siblings at cards. “As Much” is in development to become a television series. Think of it as a fierce “All in the Family” for the 21st century.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“As Much As You Can” Celebration Theatre, 7051B Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Wednesdays to Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Jan. 27. $34. (323) 212-4119 or www.celebrationtheatre.tix .com. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

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Imagining Sylvia Plath’s last days

Why, that morning in February 1963, during that bitterest of bitter British winters, did Sylvia Plath take her life? One might argue that central heating and a daily regimen of Prozac might have delayed the poet’s final rendezvous with the savage god. But would an effective drug protocol and warmer feet have also dulled Plath’s work, that unflinching confessional outpouring as much thanatopsis as literature?

In Paul Alexander’s biographical solo show “Edge,” now at the Odyssey, Angelica Torn portrays Plath on the final day of her tragically short life. It’s easy to see why Torn was nominated for a 2003 Outer Critics Circle Award for outstanding solo performance. Daughter of Rip Torn and the late, great Geraldine Page, Torn is an actor clear down to her DNA, and her portrayal on the Odyssey stage is unflinching. Her Plath is no mewling victim but a fierce fighter determined to end her life on her own terms.

However, Torn’s performance -- and Alexander’s play -- raises the question: Could a woman as dynamic and confident as Torn’s Plath really be at the point of self-annihilation? Plath had tried to kill herself several times, and the fact that Plath’s husband, British poet Ted Hughes, had recently abandoned her for another woman was reason enough to send Plath into a deep depression. (A warning to Hughes fans: This play paints Hughes, later to become poet laureate of Britain, as a cruel and narcissistic brute guilty of everything from sadism to witchcraft.)

Yet for much of the play, Torn seems more sardonic than despondent. Certainly, that tack on the part of Torn and Alexander, who also directs, is far more boldly dramatic and entertaining than a long wallow in grief and despair. But one suspects that a woman this scrappy and resilient might have stuck around a bit longer.

In the long run, whether Torn’s performance genuinely mirrors Plath’s mental state in her final hours is immaterial. And while Alexander’s text, which demonizes Hughes while scouring clean any trace of victimhood from Plath’s persona, may not adequately address the imponderable “why?” of Plath’s suicide, Torn’s performance is a privilege, a vivid grave rubbing from a brilliant, vandalized life.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Edge,” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. (Feb. 3 and March 2 at 7 p.m. ) Ends March 2. $25-$30. (310) 477-2055. www.odyssey theatre.com. Running time: 2 hours.

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Oblique ‘The Cut’ still has an edge

The eeriest thing about the first image in “The Cut” is how familiar a hooded figure in an orange jumpsuit has become. In its post-Pinter way, Mark Ravenhill’s authoritarian allegory has its sights trained as much on the present as on the not-so-distant future, which is how its stark U.S. premiere at Rude Guerrilla Theater Company plays out.

Ravenhill’s narrative, lambasted by many London critics in its 2006 Donmar Warehouse production starring Ian McKellen, is deliberately oblique. The title ostensibly concerns a government-sanctioned procedure, for which handcuffed John (the vivid David Beatty) is an obdurate applicant. He must first endure Paul (Bryan Jennings, atop his game), the civil servant who ensures that all bureaucratic mandates are in place before he administers the cut, assisted by blood-smeared Gita (Jessica Topliff).

After this taut, unsettling sequence, Ravenhill sends Paul home to Susan (the superb Lori Kelly), his pill-popping, sexually withholding wife. Their arch exchange begins almost as domestic satire, Susan bemoaning the incompetence of servant Mina (Topliff). It grows increasingly mordant with each eked-out detail, as we begin to wonder how much Susan knows and how much Paul feels. In the final scene, Ravenhill introduces Stephen (Sean Engard), their social-reformer son, with a twist that turns the play in on itself.

Director Dave Barton and his fine actors give this metaphor-laden shadow play a dualistic edge, wry yet disturbing, that slices across its opaque aspects. Against set designer David Scaglione’s crumbling, war-torn walls, Barton’s sound design and the lighting by Shannon Lee Blas keep transitions seamless and tension acute. Less extreme than Caryl Churchill’s “Far Away,” the Orwellian chill of “The Cut” won’t be for all tastes, but its restrained effects are incisive.

-- David C. Nichols

“The Cut,” Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, 202 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 3, only. Ends Feb. 9. Adult audiences. $20. (714) 547-4688. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

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‘Metamorphoses’ shows promise

The actors in the recently formed Artbrawl theater are achingly youthful and attractive, with the undiluted passion of their years. While occasionally rough around the edges, Artbrawl’s production of Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses” at the Complex’s Ruby Theater is an auspicious debut.

A lively retelling of Greek myth, Zimmerman’s richly humanistic take on Ovid is a challenging but fitting choice for this fledgling company. After all, many of these characters are gods and goddesses, so the prevalent beauty seems well placed.

In that vein, it is the play’s physical production that is most striking. Director and production designer Adam Rigg has created a sumptuous look on a shoestring, with a particular emphasis on the lighting, which shifts from the golden to the minatory as the occasion warrants. A shallow pool of water is the primary playing area, where the characters, clad in Tessa Drysdale’s simple but handsome costumes, enact their various tales, from the humorous to the tragic.

Several of the performers are professionally trained dancers, and choreographer Heather Littany’s subtle contribution contributes greatly to Rigg’s impressively smooth staging. The cast includes Drysdale, Littany, Dove Benari, Olivia Harris, Kate Littany, AJ Moorehead, Adam Siladi and Scot Young. While executing their assorted characters, most of which are rooted in contemporary idiom, the performers are uniformly prepossessing. However, during the narrative segments of the show, the cast’s California cadences grate on the ear, when a more mellifluous and mature rendering would have been welcome.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Metamorphoses,” Complex’s Ruby Theatre, 6478 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Ends Jan. 20. $20. (323) 728-6078. www.artbrawl .org. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

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Rude Guerrilla revisits ‘Beirut’

Given all that has and has not changed about AIDS since 1987, when “Beirut” premiered, it’s noteworthy how much drama it retains. As the determined but uneven revival at Rude Guerrilla Theater Company demonstrates, when Alan Bowne’s dystopian look at romance amid quarantine works, it works on the solar plexus.

Set on the Lower East Side of a Manhattan divided by an unspecified plague, “Beirut” follows two disparate lovers. Torch (Alex Walters) is the infected hero, first seen fitfully sleeping on a mattress amid piles of crumpled pamphlets and federally issued canned goods. Into this dank purgatory comes Blue (Jami McCoy), his uninfected girlfriend, who has bluffed her way in by faking the posterior tattoo that denotes virus carriers. This is verifiable since both spend much of the play in their underwear and less.

Their graphic colloquy evolves into a plea for love in the face of annihilation. Torch initially rebuffs Blue, who prefers risking her life with him to spending it alone. The plot swerves when the guard (Rick Kopps) makes his flashlighted inspection for lesions, at which point director Dave Barton’s staging is most vital.

Elsewhere, his game production has its moments of raw punch, but the requisite urgency comes and goes. Walters and McCoy, more human-scaled than archetypal originators Michael David Morrison and Marisa Tomei, are certainly uninhibited and committed. Yet their over-studied accents and exposed technique denote still-forming characterizations.

Nor is the pervasive sense of totalitarian existence that spurs the pair’s desire an unwavering fait accompli. The script loses intensity whenever outdated terminology and attitudes intrude on our awareness. Although “Beirut” still has social and histrionic value, its effect here is more sporadic than relentless.

-- David C. Nichols

“Beirut,” Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, 202 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. 4:30 p.m. Saturdays, 6 p.m. Sundays. Ends Feb. 3. Adult audiences. $20. (714) 547-4688. Running time: 1 hour.

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Is what happened worth watching?

In “Naked Yoga” at Unknown Theater, art doesn’t imitate life, it transcribes it. Writer-director Alexander Carver based this account of sexual politics between a too-accommodating writer and a beautiful opportunist on his own real-life experience. That’s pretty much all we get.

The plot follows Aaron (the valiant Boomie Aglietti), a transplanted Chicago screenwriter who first appears hauling a sofa into his new Venice apartment with lawyer friend Derrick (Dion Lack). Though Aaron’s romantic history is less than stellar, that doesn’t stop him from calling up the looker who slipped her number in his back pocket a few hours earlier.

Suzanne (the effective Danielle Hartnett), a yoga instructor whose free-spirit exterior conceals entitlement, quickly appropriates Aaron’s household and renders his masculinity nearly extinct. Complications come from Jill (Kelly Lett), the virago who lives next door; Mrs. Patterson (Elizabeth Southard), Suzanne’s conservative English mother; and Alistair (Rodrigo Robles), the fiance who preceded Aaron as Suzanne’s prey.

The premise has a basic, “Friends” kind of promise, and Carver lays on his one-liners. In the theater, though, even boulevard comedy requires more than sheer situation to sustain interest, let alone laughter.

Carver’s rudimentary direction is also problematic, despite Sean So’s witty, Leonard Cohen-driven sound design, and the lack of stage training in certain players is glaring. “Naked Yoga” may actually have occurred, but that doesn’t make this limp workshop effort worthy of being staged until rewrites transpire.

-- D.C.N.

“Naked Yoga,” Unknown Theater, 110 Seward St., L.A. 8 p.m. Thursdays to Sundays. Ends Feb. 24. $12 online, $16 at door. (323) 960-5770 or www.plays411.com/naked yoga. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.