‘Love or Something’ a Terrific Failure

Interesting how a motley production design can undermine an otherwise engrossing show.

In the quirky, romantic “Love or Something Out on Highway 97,” at the Cast Theatre in Hollywood, we’re not on a dreamy highway where the playwright emotionally wants us, but in a crummy apartment full of desolate props. The effect on this ambitious comedy by Connie Monaghan is artless and distracting.

By the show’s indifference to set design (which is uncredited), by just throwing up poster board walls and scattering some sticks and bones around the set, the production puts unreasonable pressure on the actors to carry a show that is tricky enough as it is.

A bleak Walla Walla, Wash., terrain is the background for an edgy love affair between a couple of small-time con artists (Dan Bell’s stringy-haired, tenacious art forger and Molly Cleator’s squeaky-voiced, deliciously scrappy shoplifter). They are sharply counterpointed by the jealousy of a jilted buddy of an ex-con, memorably created bv James Oseland. Oseland’s acting is as vivid as the scratch of a match.

The playwright has studied under John Steppling, and Steppling-esque minimalism propels the action. But her structure is overloaded with exposition and memory devices, some of which (notably the overripe Tina Preston’s voracious mother) materialize like Oedipally-spiced lounge acts.

Director John DiFusco has his hands full, but also the playwright’s best lines: He is the play’s narrator/ghost, who illuminates Monaghan’s literary strengths with pungent and ironic asides.

Greg Hormel, lead guitarist with the Blasters, composed a solid score, and the lighting scheme designed by Mark Imre Svastics casts huge film noir -like shadows on the white walls, as if to make up for the lifeless interiors.

In sum: a terrific failure, one that compels urgent questions about what makes theater work. Better-crafted plays rarely do as much.

“Love or Something Out on Highway 97,” The Cast Theatre, 800 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood. Mondays and Tuesdays, 8 p.m. Indefinitely. $8; (213) 462-0265. Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission.

‘Creating God’ Is Strident, Repetitive

Failure, however, is not always illuminating. Sometimes it’s exhausting. A new troupe of players have opened the Quality Control Theatre Company at Burbank’s Third Stage in the Valley, with a USC playwriting award-winner, “Creating God.”

With a title like that, you sense trouble ahead. Writer-producer-director Jason Lesner has written an absurdist allegory of Life. We’re in a cage at a zoo with two young men (Geoffrey Infeld and Jeff Koch) who shriek and leap up and down a lot. They don’t know they can’t escape Life. A sign posted outside the bars says “Philosophy Majors in Their Natural Habitat.”

Gradually they are joined by Woman, Black Man, Old Man, and Baby, whom the brutalizing young men repeatedly abuse and terrorize. At the end they are joined by another, more powerful man, Dictator (a nice job by the grinning Brian Bryson), who wrests control. There’s a comatose zookeeper who regularly drops in.

This Meaning-of-Life play set “on the Southwest corner of oblivion,” enjoys competent technical values but is strident, repetitive, and draining. It works up to a well staged revolution and a fadeout that glows with hope from primate Baby (the moony Mike Kopelow). But this company ought to try doing some real people.

“Creating God,” the Third Stage, 2811 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 2. $10-$12; (818) 886-8630. Running time: 95 minutes.

‘Winter’s Tale’ Too Frosty at Powerhouse

It’s a winter’s tale all right: nippy inside the Powerhouse Theatre in Santa Monica and a chilled production creating a winter’s frost Shakespeare did not intend.

The failure of this production, presented by the Company Theatre Foundation in association with the Blank Theatre Company, begins with mangled and stunted diction.

“The Winter’s Tale,” one of Shakespeare’s last comedies, is darker than his earlier ones. The elements of perverse jealousy, grief and banishment are adequately conveyed by Milo Floeter’s Sicilian King Leontes and Ursula Holloman’s Hermione. But the actress playing Paulina constantly mushes her words and is impossible to comprehend. In the change of tempo in the rural second act, the bumptious rustic is so hyper you want to kill. And so it goes.

There are some successes: the colorblind casting (notably Kevin Morrow as a black King of Bohemia); the darkly attired, updated costume styles; Sindy Slater’s modulated lighting, and director Rich Crooks’ affectionately staged ending. But it’s a long evening.

“The Winter’s Tale,” Powerhouse Theatre, 3116 2nd St., in Santa Monica, Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Jan. 27. $12; (213) 392-6539. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.