Update of ‘Angry Men’: Subtle, Profound

Director Jason “Jaja” Azikiwe plays the race card with timely effectiveness in “Twelve Angry People,” an updated version of Reginald Rose’s “Twelve Angry Men,” at the Flight Theatre at the Complex.

Azikiwe, who also appears as the sole African American member of the jury, doesn’t meddle much with the dramatic rhythms of Rose’s classic courtroom drama. Nor does he opt to make his own character a star turn at the expense of the other performers on stage. To the contrary, Azikiwe’s portrayal is as subtle and straightforward as his staging.

The updating is subtle as well, emphasizing the play’s already innate themes of prejudice and society’s dual system of justice. In this case, the youth on trial for murder is black, and the unspoken subject of his race is a simmering undercurrent throughout the jurors’ deliberations. Also unspoken, but no less profound, are parallels to the O.J. Simpson trial, and the recent national dialogue about the role of race in the American justice system.

Although written almost 40 years ago, Rose’s piece has only gained in dramatic stature. Realizing this, Azikiwe lets the play do the work for him, keeping his staging simple, almost stark. Among the excellent ensemble cast, Josh Devane is a particular standout as an intellectually supercilious WASP whose hidebound notions undergo an unexpected reversal.

* “Twelve Angry People,” Flight Theatre at the Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Ends Jan. 28. $15. (213) 896-9998. Running time: 2 hours.

Duo of Plays Builds From a Slow Start

If not done well, “The Maids,” Genet’s frequently produced play about two sister-servants scheming to murder their beautiful employer, can indeed be deadly. Fortunately, Robert Cicchini’s rendering at the Hudson Guild is graphic, gripping and raw, a fever-dream peek into the perverse nether world that Genet inhabited and wrote about.

The evening’s opener, Strindberg’s “The Stronger,” is a lopsided “dialogue” between female rivals in love, one of whom remains completely mute while the other chatters nonstop. Haltingly directed by Brian Colburn, this staid, uneventful curtain-raiser opens the evening with a fizzle.

“The Maids,” as well, starts off on a somewhat inauspicious note. Sisters Solange (Moira Walley) and Claire (Kristine Knudson) speak with an unintentionally idiomatic pronunciation (drownd for drown) that grates on the nerves at first. (Walley and Knudson are double cast in their roles, as are all the performers in both pieces.)

However, as the action progresses, the dramatic fuse catches, with pyrotechnical results. As their rage against their indolent, wealthy mistress (an amusingly offhand Grace C. Renn) builds, the obsessive, oppressed sisters become caught up in an inexorable spiral of fantasy and resentment that can lead only to tragedy. In their no-holds-barred portrayals, Walley and Knudson make us experience afresh the isolation and despair of Genet’s doomed characters.

* “The Maids” and “The Stronger,” Hudson Guild Theatre, 6543 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Jan. 27. $15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Pert, Sassy Humor Overtakes ‘Pedicure’

The siren call of stardom, Nashville style, is the subject of Chambers Stevens’ “Plum Pink Pedicure” at the Company of Angels.

The play opens with Velma (Sarah Benoit) lying in a nursing home bed, being tended by her daughter Pearl (Kate Gladfelter). Velma, who has been in a deep coma for the past six months, isn’t expected to live. In Pearl’s imagination, Velma snaps out of her torpor to engage in long, lively reminiscences with her daughter. Through a series of flashbacks, we see the bombastic, tenacious Velma struggling to get her big break in the music business.

Vibrant characters and offbeat humor abound in Stevens’ promising piece--until the proceedings collapse into a standard melodrama, with an out-of-left-field subplot that casts a grim pall over the remainder of the evening.

Director Catherine Coke wisely plays up the comedic elements in her lively staging. Lee Magnuson, Pamela Walker and Kate Bridges are colorful and convincing in their various character turns. As Pearl’s love interest, Ross Bolen manages to make his sketchily rendered character thoroughly engaging. Gladfelter seems strangely subdued in a role that cries out for earthy vivacity. All the easier then, for Benoit to strut away with the show, which she promptly does, with pert, sassy aplomb.

* “Plum Pink Pedicure,” Company of Angels, 2106 Hyperion Ave., Silver Lake. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. Ends Jan. 20. $12. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

‘Bravo Company’ Sketches a Cut Up

In “Bravo Company: It’s the Cheese,” the Acme Comedy Theatre’s second-string players slice off a chunk of first-rate sketch comedy. During the course of a long and ambitious show, the farm team hits a few clunkers, but there are enough belly laughs along the way to prove once again that the folks at the Acme are consistently entertaining.

In the riotous opener, a counselor (Michael Naughton, who also wrote the piece) escorts his adolescent therapy group to the top of an 80-story building as an experiment in shock therapy, only to flail around in monumental ineffectiveness as the despondent teens leap off the roof. Todd Rohrbacher’s satire about a game show in which infertile couples battle for a newborn baby is as funny as it is dark. Also hilarious are Marcus Jacques and J. Keith van Straaten as two elderly Southern men who convulsively spout side-splitting regional aphorisms. Van Straaten also scores as an 8-year-old lounge lizard, who entertains the rabble in his own school cafeteria.

Musical director Jonathan Green provides lively segues between sketches. Director M.D. Sweeney has smoothly groomed the company into a cohesive whole, but why Sweeney has included two extremely similar Spanish-language sketches seems an uncharacteristic error in judgment.

* “Bravo Company: It’s the Cheese,” Acme Comedy Theatre, 135 N. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles. Fridays only, 8. Runs indefinitely. $12. (213) 525-0202. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.