Highlighting the Comedy in ‘Summer’

If anybody gets away with writing the same play over and over again, it’s Tennessee Williams. His “Suddenly Last Summer” at the West Coast Ensemble may not be his finest work, but the one-act’s images still soar miles above the prosaic rhetoric that’s today’s norm.

Williams used his family members as inspiration for his characters, and you see reflections of his puritanical mother and institutionalized elder sister in this play. Yet it’s primarily the poetic descriptions that make certain moments of “Suddenly Last Summer” transcendent.

Dr. Cukrowicz (a reserved Rodger Burt), a struggling physician who has pioneered a lobotomy technique, is summoned by the venerable Mrs. Venable (the Hepburnesque Irene Roseen). The lady, it seems, wants the young doctor (shades of “Summer and Smoke”) to examine her troublesome niece Catherine (the measured but volatile Carol Davis) to see if the girl might be a candidate for the procedure.

The problem with willful Catherine is that she persists in telling an unflattering (although perhaps true) story about the death, last summer, of Mrs. Venable’s only son, a poet. Naturally, the entire play builds toward Catherine’s recitation of the odyssey she and the poet shared in a hot Mexican beach town. And it’s worth the wait.

Prior to the story, the central conflict pits Catherine, her mother (flighty Rachael Winfree) and brother (gawky David Youse)--who are Mrs. Venable’s poor relations by marriage--against the upper crusty matriarch and her limitless denial. In a way, it’s a comic flip side to the infighting in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Fortunately, director Claudia Jaffee lets her mostly able cast go full tilt with the comedy, bringing out an often underplayed side of Williams. But she hasn’t made the harrowing moments as credible as could be, partly due to hamfistedly cinematic music cues and other leaden devices. You don’t need a swelling soundtrack to make Williams’ point; the crescendos are right there in the text.

* “Suddenly Last Summer,” West Coast Ensemble, 6240 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends March 13. $13. (213) 871-1052. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Unfinished Plays, Provocative Voices

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Neither “The Silence of a Kiss” nor “La Llorona Loca” is in finished form yet, but this pair of parables at the Celebration Theatre nonetheless offers a favorable introduction to two provocative voices.

Leave it to Monica Palacios, best known for her solo performance “Latin Lezbo Comic,” to cast the legendary Mexican wailing ghost La Llorona as a lesbian. In this brief three-character sketch, Palacios outlines a revisionist explanation of how the famously foul-tempered female, who drowned her own kids, came to be in such a bad mood. It’s like no version you’ve heard before.

Palacios has a hip way with anachronisms and speech quirks, not to mention a ribald sense of humor. But this piece is more narrative than dramatic right now, and needs to be taken out of the third person before her irreverence can play for what it’s worth.

Guillermo Reyes’ “The Silence of a Kiss” is a meandering yarn about a marginally employed New York actor (Gary O’Brien) and the sexually and nationally ambiguous “immigrant” (Paul Jerome) with whom he has an affair.

The relationship ranges from attenuated kissing sequences to a “Pygmalion” parody, in which the actor attempts to teach his non-speaking love the language of “Lady Di,” substituting “the subway in Manhattan” for “the rain in Spain.” There are ideas and metaphors here that deserved to be expanded, as well as many that should be cut.

* “The Silence of a Kiss” and “La Llorona Loca,” Celebration Theatre, 7051-B Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Mondays-Tuesdays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 22. $8. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour.

Lots of Pretense, Little Romance

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With two delusional, homicidal romantics as protagonists, “Caribbean Romance” at the Tamarind can’t be as maudlin as it seems. But then again, maybe it can.

Bill Sterritt’s comedy strains toward significance, but reaches pretentiousness instead. It opens with the slinky heroine Taffy (Joy Kilpatrick, who tries awfully hard) lying on her bed in a Key West hotel. It’s New Year’s Eve and she’s dreaming of Fidel Castro (miscast Josef Pilato), while waiting for a boat captain who will ferry her to Cuba to save El Fidel and his floundering regime.

Bud (stiff John D’Aquino) shows up instead, and he and Taffy begin a protracted seduction that sounds as though it were written by someone who’s spent way too much time in the self-help section at Crown Books.

Sterritt mistakenly waits until late in Act II to tell us much about Taffy’s past, and Bud’s background is merely a stock abusive-Dad anecdote. What’s more, Taffy does little more than go on, ad nauseam, about how the world needs “romance” and not isolation.

Director John York, who could have mitigated the problems with a more abstract staging, slows down an already labored text.

* “Caribbean Romance,” Tamarind Theatre, 5919 Franklin Ave., Hollywood. Mondays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 23. $12. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours.

‘Frankie and Johnny’ Keeps Cooking

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Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” in a well-crafted production at the Odyssey, has gotten more attention than it deserves, probably because it’s such a meaty vehicle for actors.

Seen in recent years at the Taper as well as onscreen, it’s the story of a low-rent tryst between a waitress and a cook. She’s the aggressor who brings him home, presumably for a one-night stand. But when she goes to turn him out, he not only won’t go, but also insists on insinuating himself into her life. We’re talking marriage and babies here.

The gimmick is the gender-role reversal, with the emotionally armored female and the clingy male. But the characters (especially the woman) don’t ring true, despite finely textured portrayals by both Robert Chimento and Joan Sweeney.

* “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5:30 p.m. Ends March 6. $15.50-$19.50. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours.

‘Desired Effect’: Of Human Bondage

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Tie me up. Tie me down. Make me watch bad plays.

Filmmaker Pedro Almodovar may have done it better, but playwright Troy Tradup also fixates on the bondage-love connection in “The Desired Effect” at the Limelight Playhouse.

The Lover (David Trudell) kidnaps the Loved (Gil Ferrales) because he thinks they exchanged meaningful glances in the office. But the Loved isn’t into it. He resists. He argues. He pleads. Then the captor unties the captive and they consummate the relationship--which is where it gets really silly.

The problem isn’t so much that the scenario is thin, but that the dialogue is artless. There are a few tense laughs, mostly thanks to Trudell’s catty line readings, but this amateurish work reads like an acting exercise. And director Daniel Emil Mulia hasn’t done much to help.

* “The Desired Effect,” Limelight Playhouse, 10634 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends March 6. $10. (213) 969-2445. Running time: 1 hour.