No Two Men Are Alike in Tolins’ ‘Clothes Horses’ at N.O.T.E.

Maleness is much richer than the culture usually allows for, and Theatre of N.O.T.E.’s one-act threesome, “Clothes Horses,” suggests that no two men are alike. None of these one-acts--written, directed and acted by men--is alike either.

Jon Tolins, a writer with a refreshing knack for comically revelatory situations (as in his still-running “The Climate”), starts things off with “The Man Who Got Away.” GlennAlan Packman, whose emotionally firm but lonely gay man is 180 degrees away from the nearest cliche, finds himself dealing with Russell Smith as an urban cowboy who may be into gay-bashing. Tolins refuses to pin it down, which is just fine under Phil Ward’s direction.

Richard Vetere’s “Gangster Apparel” plays out with a remarkably satisfying sense of inevitability. Ivan Migel’s Louis is a real clothes horse: His ritual of setting out his duds in a motel room becomes an ideally comic example of the idea that character is action. Naturally, Louis’ partner on a hit job, Nick Hardin’s Joey, can’t dress to save his life. So Louis teaches him, and before we know it, Vetere has fashioned a fable on the complex mechanics of promotion and demotion in the underworld. Migel and Hardin, with Brandon Maggart directing, are so deep inside that motel room it’s scary.

Director Robert Castle may have wanted a free-wheeling, random feel to his staging of Denny McDonald’s “Way of the West,” but this heart-to-heart between two guys on the rodeo circuit is fairly unreined. Todd Stanton’s Bobby is supposed to be an aging bull rider, but he looks plenty young and strong to us. Doug Burch’s Sonny declares the old West code of honor like a religious credo, but he needs to be more fanatical to be interesting.

‘Clothes Horses,” Theatre of N.O.T.E., 1705 N. Kenmore Ave., Hollywood, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends July 6. $10; (213) 666-5550. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Women Have a Turn in ‘Win/Lose/Draw’

Women are on the other side of the universe from men, as we go from “Clothes Horses” to “Win/Lose/Draw,” at Theatre 6470 in Hollywood. Again, it’s three one-acts and one gender: Mary Gallagher and Ara Watson wrote, Iris Dugow directed, and actresses Jill Holden and Kathleen Bailey take on three contrasting sets of very flawed women.

This version of “Win/Lose/Draw,” though, pales next to its previous incarnation at the Skylight Theatre in 1988--and Gallagher’s and Watson’s creations lose some freshness too on a second viewing. In the comedy pieces, “Little Miss Fresno” and “Chocolate Cake,” Holden and Bailey hold to a sitcom line rather than diving into the sad underbellies of the stories. And in “Final Placement,” in which Holden is a desperate, abusive mother and Bailey is her social worker, neither goes beyond type. They feel wrong for the play: Bailey is too corporate by half, and Holden is all accent and no soul as a child-woman undone by her lack of good sense.

“Win/Lose/Draw,” Theatre 6470, 6470 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends June 29. $12.50; (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours.

‘Pawnbroker’ Finally Appears as a Play

When Sidney Lumet’s film version of Edward Lewis Wallant’s novel “The Pawnbroker” appeared in 1965, it struck many people as stageworthy. But Lumet, dipping in the well of Antonioni and other European innovators, has never made a more violently filmic movie than this, lifting David Friedkin and Morton Fine’s script out of the muck of staginess.

Still, it’s strange that only now is “The Pawnbroker” appearing for the first time as a play--and in a remote corner of a Woodland Hills shopping center, no less. The Center Stage doesn’t permit set and light designer J. Kent Inasy to create a sufficiently caged-in world for Harlem pawnbroker and Holocaust survivor Sol Nazerman (Milos Kirek)--though Inasy’s expressive lights take us a long way into Nazerman’s mind.

The late Friedkin’s son, Gregory, has directed and adapted with much more conviction than imagination. Instead of Nazerman’s flashbacks to the Nazi death camps pounding into us like a heart attack coming on, they dissipate into so much dry ice. (There’s no theatrical equivalent, for instance, to the film’s superb intercutting of subway and death-camp trains.)

Even with a huge cast of 19, Kirek is the center, and the dissipation is his responsibility as well. This Czech actor’s accent is doubly miscalculated: almost impenetrable and distinctly Czech when it should be German. Kirek more confidently grasps Nazerman’s cold aloofness than his inner pain.

Carlos Gomez is a mile-a-minute as the shop assistant, and Ken Harris and Lee Mathis get down as a pair of thugs. Kim Delgado is over the top as a hood Nazerman can’t get away from, but Alexandra Kenworthy plays only the saccharine and not the disappointment of a befriending lady.

“The Pawnbroker,” Center Stage, 20929 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills, Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Indefinitely. $17.50; (818) 986-2908. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.

‘Ghostman’s’ Trauma Lacks a Firm Grip

The nice Mormon congregation of Helper, Utah, is just too sweet and loving at the start of Stuart Gordon’s staging of Wendy Hammond’s “The Ghostman,” at Harman Avenue Theatre. Some awful trauma is sure to come.

When it does, Gordon and Hammond don’t find a way to make it even mildly gripping. What wasn’t expected was that Gordon, founder of Chicago’s Organic Theatre Company and a cult hero as the maker of the fiendishly funny movie “Re-Animator,” would get his big scenes so wrong.

Ian Patrick Williams, as a family man nearly driven to madness by fetid memories of his late father molesting him as a boy, pushes himself to the emotional edge and carries the show on his shoulders. The rest of the cast flounders and looks plain silly--turning from good churchgoers into hissing ghouls--in those big moments when Williams’ nightmares occur.

“The Ghostman,” Harman Avenue Theatre, 522 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends June 29. $15; (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Muddled ‘Hot House’ Infected Throughout

Tension might be expected from a play set in a vague future where “virus control” squads patrol the streets and an infected boy has to be hidden away.

Instead, in Alan Litsey’s staging of Debra Thornton’s tortuously muddled “Hot House,” at the Callboard Theatre in West Hollywood, Litsey’s actors speak right past each other, run aimlessly in and out of the room and only make Thornton’s already ludicrous dialogue into something memorably bad. We won’t soon forget when the boy is asked by his mother (regarding Thornton’s fatally-infected, expletive-indulgent junkie), “Can’t she speak English?” and he replies, “I don’t think she can, Mom.”

“Hot House,” Callboard Theatre, 8451 Melrose Place, West Hollywood, Mondays-Tuesdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends June 24. $20; (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.