Zany Company Saves ‘Married Bachelor’

“The Married Bachelor” at the Gene Dynarski Theater is a naughty comedy about a husband’s midlife wanderlust. The production is so formula-ridden that it seems assembled by computer. But not to despair. The brisk staging and addled playing compensate for the hackneyed plot.

Playwright Lew Riley has propelled this wife-swapping yarn from Orange County to Hollywood, where the audience is regaled by a farce so dated it’s almost quaint.

The protagonist is a lascivious family man (the brusquely humorous Steve Eastin) who secretly reads the sex ads in the alternative press. The show is best expressed by an outrageously dated game of strip poker, which the players salvage by timing and innocence.

There’s a liberated neighbor couple (the dashing Kelley Hinman and the obtuse Hilary Green) and a running 976-sex phone gag. You often grin against your better judgment.

The production’s singular shining performance is the endearing Lee Lawson as the central character’s coping, durable wife. Able support is drawn by Marie O’Donnell’s aggressive house guest and, in cliche roles, David Youse, Lisa Picotte and Judy Karoly.

Glenn Kelman directs with dispatch and Marty Svoboda’s interior set design is spacious and full of doorways. It’s not Moliere or Feydeau but the Three Stooges would be at home here. “The Married Bachelor,” Gene Dynarski Theatre, 5600 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends July 14. $15; (213) 474-7268. Running time: 2 hours.

‘Happily . . . Even After’ Fails, but With Flair

Theatre 40’s staging of playwright Hindi Brooks’ marriage play, “Happily . . . Even After,” is an interesting failure.

It’s interesting because the husband and wife, a Jewish couple, are at the end of a long, agonizing marriage, and the characters register painfully close to many around us.

It’s a failure because it’s all a conceit--the play opens upon the wife’s death. She’s laid out in a casket in her living room and her grieving husband comes to assuage his guilt. In his mind (and before our eyes), she arises to chide, relive and find renewed love with the man who emotionally abused her, leaving her for another.

The play drifts through time, including scenes with a daughter and her boyfriend (Angelina Brunneau and James Bartz), in a tapestry delicately negotiated by director Jerry Beal. As an elderly patron in the house said to another observer at the end, “The moral here is that you should be good to your wife while she’s alive!”

True enough, but a forlorn marriage once-removed by death is not the stuff of gripping drama, especially with a running cliche about the wife’s waistline. Even the bulky daughter has a weight problem. What contributes to the frustration is the whining survivor of a husband whose sentiment and boorish guilt arrive too late. He’s also devoid of grace at the hands of actor Manny Kleinmuntz (playwright Brooks’ real-life husband).

You wish the husband had croaked instead of his insecure wife who only wanted to be loved (a lively, sweet portrayal by Dorothy Sinclair).

“Happily ... Even After,” Theatre 40, 241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Mondays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends July 3. $10; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

Ambitious Staging of Genet’s ‘Blacks’

“The Blacks,’ Jean Genet’s multilayered play about race, which Genet called “a clown show,” is undergoing an unusual revival at the Inner City Cultural Center. Director Haimanot Alemu, an Ethiopian actor and political exile, is staging it like a circus under a big top, and the all black-cast is a cultural mix of five nationalities.

The problem with the ambitious production is threefold: the play’s length is daunting (even though the script has been slashed); the acoustics in the ICCC’s second-floor Loge Theatre are terrible, and the range of accents and muffled diction make much of the dialogue incomprehensible. The production is mind-wrenching to follow, even if you’re familiar with the play.

Originally produced in Paris in 1959 and as an Off Broadway hit with James Earl Jones in 1961, “The Blacks” is a devilish play within a play about a black man’s seduction and rape of a white woman, a (circus) trial and, ultimately, the assassination of all the hypocritical whites (black actors in whiteface).

The ideas in “The Blacks” cut through many of the same taboos that the movie “Jungle Fever” does today. Traditionally, the play has been staged in tuxedos for mainly white audiences. At ICCC, the European tone has been thrown out. The audience is black and the black characters (in black masks yet!) are culturally African in dance, costume and revolutionary imagery. This is the show’s distinction and its strength.

Among the actors, Cedric Scott and Claudia Robinson (who also designed the ethnic costumes) cut forceful figures. So do Gene Bolande and Patricia Belcher, both of whom made a strong showing in a January production of “The Blacks” at the Celtic Arts Center.

“The Blacks,” Inner City Cultural Center, 1308 S. New Hampshire Ave. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends July 21. $10-$15; (213) 387-1161. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

Verbal Voids Mar ‘Faith’s Body’

Vocal projection is at the heart of the trouble with “Faith’s Body” at the Lost Studio (which is a hard-to-find unmarked doorway leading up to a surprisingly comfortable theater).

Robert Hummer, a playwright himself, plays the central figure, an amnesiac who mysteriously shows up at the door of a young woman who lives alone by the beach. Through the kitchen door of set designer Steve Zinn’s functional beach house we can see the rolling dunes and white oil drums of a Southern California shoreline. It’s the nicest touch in this gentle play written and directed by Gilbert Girion. But the effect is like swimming under water.

The play is so tremulous and minimalist you want to scream.

Not only is the dialogue bare in this curiosity, but great pregnant silences are punctuated by actors (especially the young woman played by Dani Minnick) who speak so low that you have to strain to hear them. Rather than being larger than life, “Faith’s Body,” which also deals with the sudden appearance of a little girl (the equally inaudible Ashley Lennon Thomas), reduces life to a series of verbal voids.

Supporting characters from the real world are nods to dull reality (Sandy Bull’s Sparkletts man, Steven M. Gagnon’s ex-boyfriend and the amnesiac’s wife, played by Barbara Weetman). Meanwhile, Hummer and Minnick’s central characters communicate on unspoken levels that are arch instead of dramatic. As an actor, Hummer has a vaguely tormented quality, like a playwright who’s cast himself in a bad dream.--R.L.

“Faith’s Body,” Lost Studio, 130 S. La Brea Blvd. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends July 21. $12; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Daunting Decibels in ‘Walk a Mile’

In light of the lousy diction found on this week’s beat, it’s refreshing to report that you can hear Jim Turner very clearly in his one-man cardiac arrest, “Walk a Mile in My Head” at the Lex Theatre.

There’s only one problem: Turner’s big mouth. He’s like a carnival barker or a guy pitching used cars on TV. He shouts and barks. And he never lets up. It’s a drag of a comedy, messy, strewn with zany props, lacking wit, devoid of originality or social point.

But, listen, bubble-gummers loved it. Kids roared. Turner’s Big Bugs, a flustered takeoff on Captain Kangaroo, and his opening spiritual hustle full of pep and piety shows flashes of talent, like a lighter that flares for just a second.

Casey Kasem comes up and there’s a weird number about Gary Lewis and dad Jerry. But be careful about sitting in the front row. Some people got tied up with ropes.

“Walk a Mile in My Head,” Lex Theatre, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends June 29. $5; (213) 463-6244. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.