THEATER BEAT

Meet America’s future: A boy, 16, is in a gifted program, making excellent grades. His sister, 11, shows signs of being even smarter. These kids can be whatever they want to be.

Or so we’d like to think.

In demonstrating why they can’t, Lucy Thurber presents a heart-wrenching portrait of a much too large segment of the population. Her play “Scarcity,” given its premiere by New York’s Atlantic Theater Company in 2007, is a harrowing yet miraculously tender account of promise thwarted by poverty in myriad forms -- economic, emotional, social and many others as well. The play arrives in Los Angeles in a crackling presentation by the rambunctious young company known as needtheater.

Bridget Shergalis portrays the girl with such stinging intelligence that she brings renewed meaning to that old adjective “whip-smart.” Jarrett Sleeper, as the boy, is sweetly dutiful, especially toward his sister, even as despair drives him toward an anguishing act of abandonment.

Their parents, onetime high school heroes, can’t seem to catch a break. Mom (Rebecca Jordan) is wrung out from being primary nurturer as well as breadwinner, while Dad (Randy Irwin) -- stewing in frustration, shame and boredom -- is directing inappropriate comments toward his daughter and getting grabby.

Thurber knows where the cliff’s edge is and doesn’t push us off of it. Even in dark moments, some everyday humiliation will befall a character who’s stepped out of line, and humor bursts through. Under Kappy Kilburn’s direction, each person is so fully dimensional that we can always see goodness, no matter how twisted out of shape it has become.

The family’s would-be lifelines are the mom’s better-off cousin (Steve Walker), a blowhard who’s casually cruel toward his wife (Wendy Johnson), and a teacher (Kim Swennen) who gets tripped up by the arrogance of privilege.

The powerful storytelling keeps sending us back to that title to ponder anew how to read it: Scarcity? Or Scar City?

--

Daryl H. Miller --

“Scarcity,” needtheater at the Imagined Life Theater, 5615 San Vicente Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 22. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes. (800) 838-3006 or needtheater .org.

--

Murder mystery in classic form

“Bleeding Through” at Shakespeare Festival/LA is Theresa Chavez and Rose Portillo’s noir-tinged interactive theater piece exhuming the secrets within historic Angelino Heights. Based on Norman Klein’s novella, this About Productions attraction operates on multiple levels.

After the Unreliable Narrator (David Fruechting) prepares us for more than one version of the truth, we sit around the speakeasy-flavored area within designer Akeime Mitterlehner’s excellent multi-perspective set.

His story follows Molly (Lynn Milgrim), an elderly resident who may be involved with a long-ago homicide. As the Narrator queries Molly and neighbor Ezra (Ed Ramolete), the reminiscences crisscross with Molly’s younger self (Elizabeth Rainey). A morally dubious attorney (James Terry), the boss’ dissolute son (Brian Joseph) and Molly’s deceptively innocuous second husband (Pete Pano) provide complications that echo various cinematic classics, apt considering that Angelino Heights served as a location for many movie murders in Hollywood.

Chavez and Portillo impressively explore the space to suggest contextual layers, assisted by Francois-Pierre Couture’s ambient lighting, Pamela Shaw’s period costumes and the live accompaniment by musicians Scott Collins and Vinny Goila. The cast is proficient and, at times -- Molly’s first encounter with each of the men, a tense Act 2 poker game -- they reveal the promise in the premise.

However, Chavez and Portillo’s stylish stagecraft outstrips their text. Klein’s narrative is deliberately ambiguous, short on dramatic bite, which creates onstage action more elegiac than electric. There is also too little use of Claudio Rocha’s fine black-and-white videos with Kikey Castillo as yet another Molly. Although “Bleeding Through” is intelligent, admirable and certainly of local interest, it’s curiously bloodless.

--

David C. Nichols --

“Bleeding Through,” Shakespeare Festival/LA, 1238 W. 1st St., L.A. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 22. $20 and $25. www.aboutpd.org or (800) 595-4849. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

--

Gentlemen under

the influences

Harold Pinter named the four characters in “No Man’s Land” after real-life cricket players, and in Michael Peretzian’s assured revival, now at the Odyssey Theatre, the game is in full swing. In the play, this quartet haunts a Persian-carpeted study, but their moves are as competitive as anything on the green fields of Lord’s Cricket Ground. After a chance meeting in a pub, down-and-out poet Spooner (the wonderfully seedy Alan Mandell) has been invited back to the well-appointed townhouse of Hirst (Lawrence Pressman). The successful but aging man of letters lives under the bizarre care of two yobs, Briggs and Foster (Jamie Donovan and John Sloan), who may or may not be lovers. Spooner wheedles his way into Hirst’s confidences, in hopes of regular hot meals and a daily quotient of alcohol. Did they once know each other at Oxford, or is Hirst just humoring him?

A kind of “Twilight Zone” meets “Masterpiece Theatre,” this 1974 British status game may seem rather remote in contemporary Los Angeles, but it’s no different than what’s probably happening in the corridors of William Morris Endeavor. Pinter is as much anthropologist as poet, delighting in the absurdities of patrician club chat and the braggadocio of cocky lads. Yet alongside the casual barbs and dirty jokes hovers an aura of strangeness that evokes the black hole of mortality. On Tom Buderwitz’s airless set, death seems to be just on the other side of the door.

Nearly all the elements come together in this production, from Jeremy Pivnick’s sallow lighting to Spooner’s threadbare suit with grotty socks and sandals, courtesy of Audrey Eisner. Mandell relishes Pinter’s language like the single-malt whisky Spooner greedily imbibes, but watch his eyes dart in animal terror when Briggs gives him a shove. Sloan excels as the sexually ambiguous Foster, an anxious peacock trapped in a pen. Pressman has yet to settle into Hirst -- he is still performing the role instead of inhabiting it -- but like the rich, bitter liquor that takes the sting out of oblivion, this show likely will improve with age.

--

Charlotte Stoudt --

“No Man’s Land” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays; also 7 p.m. Sunday and Dec. 13. Dark Nov. 26. Ends Dec. 20. $25 and $30. Contact (310) 477-2055 or www.odysseytheatre.com. Running time: 2 hours.

--

A muddied tale

of going clean

“I’m not ashamed of who I am,” claims Julian, the heroin-addicted Vietnam War veteran whose downward spiral drives Paul Benjamin’s “Memoirs” at Stage 52 Theater. “It’s who I was made into.”

Victim of circumstance or not, Julian still has a lot to answer for as he faces a final struggle to kick his habit. It’s a dramatic odyssey that demands and gets fierce physical and emotional commitment from lead actor Kevin Jackson, despite some lapses in a script that still needs work.

Set in 1975 Harlem, writer-director Benjamin’s tense, downbeat one-act gets right to the point, opening with Julian shooting up with the reluctant help of his wife (quietly understated Tanya Lane). It’s not the worst of the indignities he’s forced on her, which has brought their marriage to the breaking point. When she leaves him, winning her back is the overriding need that finally induces Julian to get clean.

Structurally, Benjamin’s morality tale relies heavily on the tropes of “chitlin circuit” melodrama familiar to urban black audiences. The unfolding scenes chart a predictable course. No nuance or subtlety here -- Julian’s story is sketched in broad strokes of good and evil as he faces temptations from without and within.

After his wife’s departure, we witness the deterioration of Julian’s best friend and doomed fellow junkie, Mickey (Javon Johnson), leading to a pivotal confrontation when Julian’s pusher, Tutu (Felton Perry), comes by to collect Julian’s unpaid debts.

Within this traditional narrative formula, some of Benjamin’s dialogue innovates with the urgency and streetwise eloquence of contemporary hip-hop -- particularly in Mickey’s unraveling and Julian’s eulogy for him.

As the Mephistophelean Tutu, Perry unfortunately coasts on natural charisma, never finding enough internal depth and complexity to sell the character’s abrupt change from opponent to ally.

The story’s internal coherence founders badly on contradiction and ambiguity. For example, Julian is a former horn player who blames the Army for turning him into a junkie, yet he reminisces with Tutu about getting high together after club gigs. The finale’s sermonizing call for unity may tap implicit chords of understanding in its target audience, but its present-day references violate all sense of time and place.

--

Philip Brandes --

“Memoirs,” Stage 52 Theater, 5299 Washington Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 22. $25. (323) 960-5521 or www.plays411.com /memoirs. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.