Romance Gets Complicated in ‘The Proof of the Promise’

Looking for a 17th century Spanish play with a translation so up-to-date that it includes a pun on the name of the modern anti-baldness drug Propecia?

Try “The Proof of the Promise” (“La Prueba de las Promesas”), a comedy from 1618 by the Mexican-born Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, in a sprightly new English translation by Dakin Matthews.

This is the second Antaeus Company production of an Alarcon-Matthews project. The first, “The Liar” in 2000, was at the same theater, North Hollywood’s Secret Rose.

Like its predecessor, Anne McNaughton’s staging of “The Proof of the Promise” is a very modest affair. The theater is tiny and the set only barely three-dimensional, with hardly any attempt to distinguish Toledo from Madrid. Seven actors play far more than seven roles, donning masks for the smaller parts to clarify who’s who.

The story is complicated but clear enough. Don Illan (Bert Rosario, who alternates with Matthews) wants his daughter (Karen Stone, alternating with Jennifer Gatti) to marry the scion (Scott Allegrucci) of a rival clan, but she prefers the smoother Don Juan de Ribera (Bill Mendieta).

Don Illan, who practices magic on the side, conjures up a way for each man to reveal his true colors. Not surprisingly, the sassy servants and assistants (Rhonda Aldrich alternating with Amy Tolsky, John Apicella, Terry Evans) play large and vocal roles in the intrigues.

Apicella does justice to many of the play’s wittiest lines and gestures. The two suitors remain in sharp--and funny--contrast; Mendieta spouts Eddie Haskell-like eloquence, while Allegrucci is more authentically fervent and sometimes flustered.

The rhyming translation is replete with Americanisms, making it fairly easy on the ear.

*

The Proof of the Promise,” Secret Rose Theatre, 11246 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 1. $16-$20. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

Don Shirley

*

‘Smash’ Rewrites Shaw, Studies Social Graces

While trying to contact George Bernard Shaw in the great beyond, playwright Jeffrey Hatcher seems to have picked up some vibrations from Oscar Wilde. How else to explain all of the epigrams peppering the speeches on socialism in his stage adaptation of the early Shaw novel “An Unsocial Socialist”?

It’s a happy mixing of signals. The resulting comedy, which Hatcher calls “Smash,” has a lighter spirit than the Shaw original, published as a serialized novel in a socialist journal in 1884. Yet Shaw’s thinking remains very much at the core of Hatcher’s extensive rewrite--especially in allusions to the “life force” of women, which Shaw wrote about so passionately in his later play “Man and Superman.”

Presented in Long Beach Playhouse’s Studio Theatre, “Smash” traces the complications that ensue from a millionaire’s decision to abandon his bride so that he can fully devote himself to the spread of socialism. But for all of his grandiose plans, Sidney Trefusis (Michael Carr) is a silly goose who will more than meet his match in his bride, Henrietta (Nicole Ann Mohr), and in the young rebel Agatha Wylie (Amanda Karr) he encounters at the finishing school where he tries to foment revolution.

All it takes from Mohr or Karr is a tilt of the head, a clench of the jaw or a twinkle in the eyes to indicate that Trefusis is toast. Also delightful: a Margaret Hamilton-esque turn by Ann Ross as the finishing school’s wicked headmistress.

Director Russell St. Clair has the right ideas about making the action seem breezily frantic. But he has been only partially successful in assembling actors who can make a characterization seem larger than life yet believable, and the stage is too cramped for the physical comedy, which involves all manner of wheeled conveyances.

*

“Smash,” Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Feb. 24, 2 p.m. Ends March 2. $15. (562) 494-1014. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Daryl H. Miller

*

Serious Subtext to Parody of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’

To put it in show-biz vernacular, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has legs. “Drama Dept.’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life,” at the Sacred Fools Theater, uses Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel as the starting point for a fast, furious and funny parody dealing with the nature of racism.

Notice the possessory title. Created by Floraine Kay and Randolph Curtis Rand, the show was first produced in 1997 at New York’s Drama Dept. Whatever its inception, director Alexander Yannis Stephano and a gifted ensemble make the piece distinctly their own.

And take particular note of the subtitle, from Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species.” The emphasis is evident. Comically expressed, the scientific reasons for racial diversity are a primary subtext here, with two wacky, ersatz professors (Stan Freitag and Fred Shahadi) interrupting the action at intervals to “lecture” on the subject, in broad Italian accents a la Chico Marx.

It’s all part of the heightened hilarity and rattling comic pace. But don’t let the slapstick fool you. Belly laughs segue into pained grimaces, as the full and nasty import of slavery is hammered home. The eclectic source material includes quotes from literary luminaries, political figure, even harrowing first-hand accounts from former slaves. However loose the adaptation may be, it is still a surprisingly faithful recapitulation of Stowe’s book, with all the dramatic tension and cliff-hanging suspense of the original.

The tone varies wildly, from melodrama to minstrel show to political polemic. The core ensemble--Carolyn Hennesy, Jon Huertas, Yvans Joudain, Edgar Allan Poe IV, and J. Karen Thomas--is well equipped to handle any contingency. Gender-bending and color-blind casting are the rule, with women playing men, blacks playing whites and young playing old seamlessly.

Aaron Francis’ lighting and set are praiseworthy, and the ensemble contributes sprightly original music to the mix. A tad long-winded and overwrought, the piece could have used a little trimming, but that’s a quibble in an otherwise impressive production.

*

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 23. $15. (310) 281-8337. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

F. Kathleen Foley

*

Is It a Dream State or, ‘Perchance,’ a Nightmare?

What if you lived under a government so intrusive, not even your dreams were your own?

Such is the plight of Gerard B. (Robert Fileta), a prominent stage and television actor who finds himself on trial for a murder committed in his dreams. Currently in rehearsals for “Hamlet,” Gerard has been having sanguinary Shakespearean nightmares, which he is shocked to learn have been recorded in precise detail by government agents. Gerard’s lawyer (Joseph Hulser) cautions him to have only wholesome, politically correct dreams. But Gerard’s subconscious is not so easily subdued.

The line between reality and nightmare blurs early on in “Perchance to Dream” at the Open Fist. French playwright Jean-Claude Grumberg raises timely issues of censorship, government surveillance and paternal abandonment, but the play succeeds chiefly as absurdist vaudeville in Adrian Mitchell’s lively and funny adaptation, translated by Sasha Mitchell. Director Florinel Fatulescu and his comically gifted cast approach their material with tongues planted firmly in cheek, right up until the play’s wrenching final scenes. They aim to disorient, and they do--with plenty of chuckles along the way.

A huge, canopied bed dominates Don Llewellyn’s versatile set, lighted to genuinely creepy effect by R. Robert DeCew. Drew Dalzell’s sound design is also an essential part of Fatulescu’s shifting, dreamscape staging.

The plot is as illogical as a nightmare, but overall, the performances are precise, particularly Patrick Tuttle as a hilariously revisionist director who apparently thinks Shakespeare needs a script doctor, and Rod Sell as a buffoonish judge who is out to get Gerard. The courtroom scene, in which the lawyer and the judge hurl insults at one another with childish abandon, plays like a vintage burlesque sketch as rewritten by Kafka.

*

“Perchance to Dream,” Open Fist Theatre, 1625 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends March 9. $15. (323) 882-6912. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

F. Kathleen Foley

*

A Streamlined Staging Clarifies ‘Richard III’

If you’ve ever left one of Shakespeare’s history plays feeling befuddled by the sheer flow of events, you must see “Richard III,” presented by Circus Theatricals and the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble at the Odyssey Theatre.

Whether you’re a Shakespearean scholar or think the War of the Roses is a Valentine’s cost-cutting promotion, you will find Casey Biggs’ streamlined staging of Shakespeare’s mustache-twirling history richly comprehensible on every level.

The artistic director of Circus Theatricals, Jack Stehlin has played a lot of leads in his company’s plays. But don’t call him overexposed. That’s a modern Hollywood notion, one that the great actor-managers of theater’s heyday would have scorned. Stehlin was born to play Richard, and he goes about the task with a lethal twinkle and a craftsman’s assurance, never overplaying a single snarl.

Alfred Molina is a bang-up Buckingham, wisely content to bask in the periphery of Stehlin’s simmering, shimmering nastiness. Molina’s Buckingham feasts fastidiously with the panther Richard before he himself is eaten, undone by the rumblings of his own vestigial conscience.

When Richard orders Buckingham to butcher the child princes in the tower, Buckingham hesitates, fatally. In Richard’s cruel order, charity is folly, punishable by death.

Seasoned actors, many playing multiple roles, round out the accomplished cast. The acting is always solid and often inspired, although Biggs’ decision to cast a man--Shakespearean stalwart Neil Vipond--as Queen Margaret seems an odd tack, considering the otherwise straightforward tone.

Simplicity is key throughout. Jaret Sacrey’s scenic design is a marvel of stripped-down functionalism. Paul Taylor Robertson’s sound is unobtrusively detailed, right down to the dripping water in a dank prison cell.

Lighting designer Tim Kiley contributes essential video segments, especially effective in the play’s penultimate nightmare sequence, always a challenge to stage. The videos are just one more inspired element in the smooth and rewarding whole.

*

“Richard III,” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends April 7. $19.50-$23.50. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

F. Kathleen Foley