STAGE REVIEW : ‘Slapstick’ Provocatively Seeks Sources of Violence

Think about the Three Stooges for a moment. Amid all the slapstick, you’re likely to remember an outraged onlooker saying something like: “Gentlemen, I demand an explanation!”

The Stooges never provided much of an explanation for their mayhem. Nowadays, though, we might conclude that these characters came from severely dysfunctional families. The abuse, mainly from Moe, was extreme.

Three new stooges have arrived in town in the form of the Dell’ Arte Players, from Northern California. In their “Slapstick,” opening tonight for a three-weekend run at Hollywood’s Theatre West (after one-night performances in Santa Barbara and Westchester), they’re certainly as funny as the original Stooges. But they don’t settle for just the yuks.

Their slaps stick. Their casual violence, which we find so funny midway through act one, kills at the end of act one. The audience is compelled to examine the sources and the results of the just-pretend violence in our culture.

The show, written by the cast, begins like an old vaudeville routine. Joan Schirle and Donald Forrest crack bad jokes and knock each other around the stage. Schirle is generously padded around the hips; Forrest around the belly.

At this point, the rough-and-tumble provokes admiration more than thought, as when Norm (Forrest) takes a blow and turns his body into a delicately balanced approximation of the swath that a pendulum might cut.

But we soon see that there is something amiss with Sheila (Schirle). Whenever anyone mentions “Hollywood,” the lights (designed by Michael Foster) turn creepy, she goes into a trance and loses control.

The couple decides to take a break and go camping with Gramps (Michael Fields), the two kids and the dog in the trusty family RV. Again, the physical comedy is superlative. The family stuffs a big-screen TV, a washer-dryer and a large saw into their RV, and ties the family dog to the rear end.

Alain Schons designed a series of collapsible puppets and props--the kids, the dog, the RV, the goods that go into it--that cooperate beautifully with this cast’s crack timing. He also contributed a backdrop of two trees that soar out of their trunks--”trunks” as in “born in a trunk” rather than the customary botanical kind--up into the space above the stage.

But this pastoral retreat is not peaceful. As in the recent Stephen Sondheim musical, once this family goes “into the woods,” trouble intensifies. Not only Sheila but also Norm is revealed to suffer from traumatic flashbacks set off by a particular word.

In the second act, Schirle and Forrest do double duty as the now-animated kids, Missy and Norman Jr., alone with Gramps in the woods, and more trauma is revealed. The kids literally go through a kind of fire before they’re free--to do what? To follow in their parents’ footsteps, of course.

As staged by Jael Weisman, the tone never veers into the literal. The characters remain stick figures, and their recalled traumas almost sound like a satire of what someone might say in therapy. For those who have seen a few too many realistic plays/movies/articles/books about abuse, this is a refreshing change of pace.

We laugh at these characters instead of with them. Precisely Dell’ Arte’s point: Because we don’t identify with these people as fellow victims, we’re sucked into a mild feeling of complicity for their fate. With our laughter, we share in their victimization--if not on an individual basis, at least as part of the culture that allows this abuse. Brecht might well be interested in “Slapstick”; it illustrates some of his theories about how to address issues in theatrical terms.

But there is nothing academic or didactic about “Slapstick.” With the assistance of Gina Leishman’s original music, performed onstage by Ricky Bruno, the show remains light on its feet. The second act is so short that the evening hardly seems worthy of an intermission.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to know how to respond to this portrait of abuse being passed down from generation to generation. But although Brecht might have disagreed, that’s not really Dell’ Arte’s responsibility. It’s enough that they should illuminate their concerns as provocatively and as entertainingly as they do.

“Slapstick,” the Dell’ Arte Players, Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Hollywood, Fridays through Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 24. $10-$15. (213) 851-7977. Running time: 90 minutes.

‘Slapstick’

Joan Schirle: Sheila, Missy

Donald Forrest: Norman, Junior

Michael Fields: Roger

Written by the actors. Directed by Jael Weisman. Set Alain Schons. Lights Michael Foster. Costumes Nancy Jo Smith. Music Gina Leishman. Musician Ricky Bruno. Stage manager Lezley Troxell.