THEATER BEAT

Unexpected relevance often steers the pop-quizzical frolic of “Schoolhouse Rock Live Too!” at Greenway Court Theatre. When it does, there’s smart fun afoot. This quasi-sequel to the 2007 revue based on the 1970s animated series receives a charming staging by theatrical wizard Rick Sparks.

Set in an economically depressed diner (keenly realized by designer Adam Flemming), “Too!” cavorts among six archetypes. To save their hangout from foreclosure, the denizens draw from “Schoolhouse Rock,” its actual footage appearing overhead. Around this scenario, the show weaves 20 vintage numbers, from “Electricity” to “Conjunction Junction,” into a tasty repast.

Sparks is in his element here, making sharp use of trademark social dancing moves while effectively blending technology, camp and sentiment. Jeremy Pivnick offers another crack lighting design. Kat Marquet contributes some giggle-making costumes.

The ever-remarkable Lisa Tharps adds full-throated chanteuse to her distinguished resume as proprietor Nina. Michael Lopez shines as chef Cookie, especially choice in the deathless “I’m Just a Bill.” Jayme Lake’s server Julie and Harley Jay’s drifter Lucky display glossy voices and unaffected involvement.

At the reviewed performance, Tricia Kelly, who alternates with Kelly Meyersfield as upstairs tenant Rebecca, was able, yet operated at a remove from the material. Brian Wesley Turner’s schoolteacher Tom gamely prevailed against a noisily malfunctioning head-mike, one of two drawbacks.

The other was length. Though “Too” runs less than an hour and a half, 15 extraneous minutes could easily go. Regardless, the age-spanning crowd ate up this larky specialty, and that says it all.

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David C. Nichols

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“Schoolhouse Rock Live Too!,” Greenway Court Theatre, 544 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A. 7:30 p.m. Fridays, 4 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays. No performance tonight and July 4. Ends July 26. $24. (323) 655-7679. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

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In flight from the sins of the father

As skeletons in the family closet go, the discovery that one’s father was a fugitive war criminal would tend to rank pretty high on the trauma scale. Such is the unpleasant revelation facing Rudi, the tortured narrator of Toronto-based playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s “East of Berlin” at NoHo Arts Center.

A meditation on the generational legacy of the Holocaust told primarily in well-scripted monologue, the journey of Rudi (austere, enigmatic Russell Sams) begins in 1969 Paraguay, amid the community of German expatriates in which he’s grown up shrouded in willful ignorance. At 17, Rudi’s innocence is shattered by brainy homosexual schoolmate Hermann (James Barry, suitably smarmy but looking distractingly preppy for a supposed devotee of American Beat poets). Hermann reveals that Rudi’s father, while serving in the Nazi SS, conducted medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. In a downward spiral of self-loathing, Rudi succumbs to Hermann’s advances just to bring shame on his family. After fleeing to Germany to assume a new identity and a medical career, Rudi seeks redemption in the arms of Sarah (Carolyn Stotes), a Jewish student from America who shares his obsession with the Holocaust.

Inability to erase the sins of the past leads Rudi to a particularly disturbing homecoming. The admittedly contrived story aims for emotional inevitability rather than literal credibility, and the handsome co-staging by CB Brown and Sara Botsford is most compelling in the impassioned scenes between Rudi and Sarah.

But does he love Sarah the person or merely the symbol of atonement she represents? Sams’ deliberate deadpan delivery ignores the openings afforded by Rudi’s broken syntax and trailing, incomplete sentences. His lack of affect may be a valid choice -- numbness is an understandable and even chilling response to horrific self-knowledge -- but dramatically, it leaves us nowhere to go.

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Philip Brandes --

“East of Berlin,” NoHo Arts Center, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 19. $25. (818) 508-7101, Ext. 7. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

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Lovelorn and on the edge in L.A.

So much for maternal devotion: Teenage Antonio (Joseph Vega) is flatly informed by his mother (Misi Lopez Lecube) that she doesn’t love him and never has. Wandering Los Angeles, he’s taken in by Lulu (Alina Phelan), a mentally unhinged woman who lives in a water pipe above a polluted riverbed. A promising set-up for “Love Water,” now at Open Fist in Hollywood. But Jacqueline Wright’s study of nurture and its vicissitudes never quite gets going.

This co-production with Ensemble Studio Theatre-L.A. certainly has ambition. Sibyl Wickersheimer’s expansive set, with its concrete riverbed and giant upstage pipe, evokes the sun-bleached industrial malaise of Los Angeles, and director Dan Bonnell choreographs his 11-member cast with elegance. (Chris Wojcieszyn’s lighting is also effective.)

But Wright serves up whimsical glimpses -- a poet in a full-body cast (Joshua Wolf Coleman, witty) on the edge of a high-rise, and a man with breasts (Colin Campbell) hatching a creature (Pilar Alvarez) from a giant egg -- rather than developed characters. “I have trouble loving the people I love,” Lulu explains, but the play doesn’t explore her dilemma in a sustained way. We’re left with fragments of poetry, and a few striking images. For all its obsession with life outside the womb, “Water” is still in its embryonic stage.

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Charlotte Stoudt --

“Love Water,” Open Fist Theatre, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 11. $20. (323) 882-6912, www.openfist.org. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

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Western parody’s awkward ground

The best part of “Stranger,” Eva Anderson and Keythe Farley’s musical send-up of spaghetti westerns, is the overpowering brass score inspired by Ennio Morricone. Loud and intentionally cheesy, the music (by Anthony Bollas) winks at us as it channels the soundtracks from “A Fistful of Dollars,” “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and a few other Sergio Leone classics.

Unfortunately, the rest of the show, at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles, is a redundant parody of a genre that needs no help in generating laughs.

In a frontier town terrorized by lip-smacking Mexican bandits, a gunslinger with no name (Cameron Dye) leads the local population in an attempt to rescue one of their kidnapped citizens. Joining in the effort is the town madame, a shifty priest and (oddly) the ghosts of the gunslinger’s slain family.

“Stranger” attempts to translate the ultra-violent, dust-and-sweat milieu of the spaghetti western to the stage but the results are awkward at best. Without the benefit of the cinematic close-up, this well-intentioned effort succeeds only partially at imitating the over-the-top and in-your-face style that is the genre’s calling card.

The hard-working cast still manages to muster a few comic moments. As the Clint Eastwood stand-in, Dye is impressively square-jawed and stoic. And Ann Closs-Farley (who doubles as costume designer) plays the madame as if she’s preparing for the show’s future Vegas incarnation.

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David Ng

“Stranger,” The Bootleg Theater, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sunday, June 21 and 28. $15-$25. (213) 389-3856. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.