STAGE REVIEW: THE NIGHT ALIVE

Kenneth (Peter O'Meara) in The Night Alive. Photo credit: Michael Lamont.

 

Riders of the storm

By Ed Rampell

A poster from the 1963 movie ,The Great Escape, is a visual cue that provides a vital clue and key to what’s going on in Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive. This one-acter, performed sans intermission during its West Coast premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, is essentially about five Dubliners who live marginal lives. The onstage action takes place in the untidy “apartment” - without so much as a refrigerator - that middle aged Tommy (Paul Vincent O’Connor) rents from an older guardian of sorts named Maurice (Denis Arndt), who insists on calling it a mere “room” in his Edwardian house. Doc (Dan Donohue) is a 30-ish, dimwitted hanger-on and laborer who drifts between sleeping at his sister’s home, Tommy’s place and a van.

Enter into the pecking order and drab, lonely lives of these three solo men aimless Aimee (Fiona O’Shaughnessy), a 20-something woman with a murky past whom Tommy rides to the rescue of on a white horse, saving this total stranger from a dire predicament. In offering her refuge he turns the three men’s presumably celibate lives upside down. In the process, Tommy believes he comes alive and is being given a second chance at life.

Although, as said, The Night Alive is a one act play, what could pass for, more or less, Act I, is quite low key and uneventful - some might even consider it talky and dull. But things really pick up when Kenneth (Peter O’Meara) enters, stage right, from out of nowhere as a kind of bogeyman, turning things topsy-turvy as we learn more about who Aimee really is, and why she needed sanctuary.

This play is essentially about fringe characters yearning to get away from their boring existences. In particular, Tommy is a study in male menopause and mid-life crisis. Separated from his wife and children, somehow eking out a living by tending to “bits and pieces”, residing in Maurice’s room/apartment, he believes Aimee presents him with the opportunity to break free of the mundane, ho-hum routine of his sexless day-to-day monotony. His legs aren’t so much limbs as they are stumps; clearly, this aging, balding man has seen better days. (But maybe not much better…) The details of his and Aimee’s sex life, or what passes for it, are pretty grim - listen closely (there’s a good joke about what causes “repetitive strain injury”). But it’s better than nothing - Doc offhandedly confesses that he’s impotent, while the forlorn Maurice mourns his deceased wife.

Tommy constructs a wild plan to flee Ireland to start anew with Aimee in a place this reviewer has never before heard referred to as a haven for shattered souls seeking a second lease on life. (Really?) Be that as it may, the aforementioned The Great Escape poster tacked to Tommy’s wall is a pop culture reference to the inner meaning of McPherson’s drama. In that John Sturges World War II classic, Allied POWs plot to escape from a Nazi prison camp. As the “Cooler King,” Steve McQueen (the actor, not the director) nears the border with neutral Switzerland, desperately trying to jump the barbwire fence on a motorcycle in a scene that encompasses humans’ existential struggles for freedom. This sequence is indelibly etched in the mind’s eye of anyone who has ever seen it onscreen, and no one can fail to root for McQueen and his valiant effort to escape from the Nazis to freedom in democratic Switzerland, so near yet so far across the barbed wire.

For Tommy, Aimee is arguably his motorcycle. Will he jump the barbed wire to find freedom?

In any case play is able, ensemble acting is well-directed by Randall Arney, who previously helmed American Buffalo at the Geffen. This seems appropriate, as Alive’s down-and-out characters brought to mind David Mamet’s characters in his 1975 Buffalo. (The interactions between Tommy and Doc are also reminiscent of the relationship between George and Lenny in John Steinbeck’s heartbreaking Of Mice and Men.) Takeshi Kata’s set, with its high ceiling, strikes just the right sordid note of dinginess. Daniel Ionazzi’s lighting comes, well, alive in the mystical grand finale.

O’Meara’s Wolfman-like Kenneth puts the “fear” into McPherson’s drama, which takes unexpected turns. O’Shaughnessy, who previously played the title role in Oscar Wilde’s Salome at the Gate Theatre Dublin, isn’t particularly sexy as Aimee. But perhaps that’s precisely the point: O’Connor invests Tommy with so much desperation and sexual longing that any female in her twenties seems to have the erotic powers of an Aphrodite.

In 2014, Conor McPherson adapted a new version of The Dance of Death for A Noise Within’s L.A. production of Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s 1900 play. The much-touted and awarded Dublin-born McPherson, who previously wrote The Weir, is in the tradition of those great Gaelic scribes, such as Sean O’Casey and James Joyce, and the Welsh Dylan Thomas. McPherson may perpetuate that image of the Irish as storytellers by making the dopey Doc a writer, who scribbles (guess what?) into his notebook, but thankfully, although there is some drinking in Alive, he eschews the stereotype of the Irish as drunks. The Geffen’s production of McPherson’s 2013 play, with its magical realist, enigmatic ending that had theatergoers scratching their noggins (again, this reviewer/roadmapper to inner meanings, refers you to The Great Escape poster and another pop cultural signpost: a rendition of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On), gives Angeleno audiences another opportunity to sample this bard’s vision.     

 

The Night Alive runs through March 15 at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., LA CA 90024. For info: 310-208-5454; www.geffenplayhouse.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

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STAGE REVIEW: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS JEFFERSON, CHARLES DICKENS AND COUNT LEO TOLSTOY: DISCORD

A scene from The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord. Photo by Michael Lamont.

Word up

By Ed Rampell

 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a play featuring three characters known for being writers -- and philosophical ones, at that -- is bound to be talky. As its rather longwinded title indicates, The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord has many words. Scott Carter’s play’s premise is reminiscent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, in that in the hereafter the three title characters are eternally confined to quarters with one another. But instead of, as Sartre’s cowardly character Joseph Garcin put it, “hell is other people," Hades is hearing self-important blowhards hold forth for all eternity.

 

Or, perhaps heaven, as we’re never entirely sure where our titular trio of chatterboxes wind up. (Albeit for only 85 straight minutes, not, thankfully, perpetuity -- although when they discuss Jesus it does begin to feel like time without end). Fortunately, the three thesps who bring the idealistic scribblers to life are all accomplished actors of stage and screen who often succeed in making Carter’s philosopho-palooza engaging, entertaining, and dare I say, at times enlightening.

 

David Melville, a Shakespearean actor of English origins, hams it up as his fellow countryman Charles Dickens. In fact, Melville’s scenery chewing and scene stealing kinetic kleptomania may have fans of the author of Oliver Twist shouting: “What the Dickens?” One wonders if Dickens acted so boorishly and buffoonishly. Melville’s comical performance reminded this spectator of the zany Alan Seus, on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. In any case, Melville’s hammy performance injects a needed note of hilarity into what could otherwise have been a very dull play. Indeed, Ralph Fiennes’ preternaturally boring 2013 film, The Invisible Woman, which trod some of the same territory as The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord, was the stinkeroo of last year’s AFI filmfest. (Speaking of the afterlife, when this writer dies he’ll ask St. Peter to give him back the three hours he wasted at that screening the fiendish Fiennes was late for, by taking them away from Fiennes and returning the lost time to him in order to enjoy a few more hours on Earth.)

 

This Melvillean take on Dickens is in sharp contrast to Larry Cedar’s Jefferson (who appeared in 1776 -- although not as Jefferson -- and in HBO’s Deadwood series, as well as the one-man show Orwellian). Whereas Melville’s Dickens is daffy, Cedar is dour; Melville is wild, Cedar is wry. As Leo “Don’t Call Me Count!” Tolstoy Armin Shimerman shimmers as an over the top novelist (he portrayed Star Trek, Deep Space Nine’s Quark and appeared on Broadway in Three Penny Opera). Racing around the stage in his peasant getup, fright wig and stagey beard Shimerman seemed to this reviewer more like Rasputin than the author War and Peace, but what does your humble scribe know?

 

This production helmed by veteran director Matt August makes deft use of stagecraft and special effects to break up the characters’ interminable prattle, trying to figure out why they are thrown together and then pondering the meaning of life. This creative team includes lighting designer Luke Moyer, sound designer Cricket Myers, projection designer Jeffrey Elias Teeter and to a lesser extent scenic designer Takeshita, as the set per se is pretty minimal.

 

Since 1993, playwright Carter has been Bill Maher’s executive producer, from the comic’s Politically Incorrect days on Comedy Central and then ABC, to HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Carter tries to replicate Maher’s formula of mixing punditry, patter and pleasantries in Discord, hence Melville’s -- and to a lesser extent Shimerman’s -- comic relief. When the one-acter descends into dissertations on the New Testament it reminded this critic of Kevin Smith’s obscure, doctrinal asides on Catholicism in his film, Dogma, and is strictly snoresville for this secular humanist atheist (like Maher!) and non-Christian. Seriously dude, this ain’t a passion play and if this scribe wanted to listen to tedious New Testament dissertations, on Sundays he’d head for the nearest steeple -- where this biblical blather belongs -- not the stage, where it doesn’t (at least, not since the Dark Ages).

 

But when Jefferson and company muse upon other matters The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord comes alive and is philosophically engaging. In meditating out loud about why the three of them have been thrown together their flaws are discussed. Interestingly, their libidos have gotten the better of them (in terms of the patriarchal monogamy conventions of their eras). When it comes to sex, Tolstoy was a no account Count, Dickens a dickens of an adulterer and Jefferson the worst of all. Indeed, The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discordbecomes most interesting when the author of The Declaration of Independence’s slave owning is questioned.

 

But the answer is really quite simple: It’s not just that Jefferson was a hypocrite of gargantuan proportions (which, of course, he was). In fact, he was very simply pursuing his own class interests. If pursuing his happiness meant getting rid of an English king or coercing Africans to do all his labor for him so he could drink fine wine, read rarified texts, invent do-hickeys and have sex with his late wife’s darker skinned half-sister, so be it. And you can be damned sure that to secure their rights, Jefferson and his fellow ruling class ilk instituted a Government that did not derive their unjust powers from the consent of the governed -- and enslaved. Jefferson and those other slave owning Founding Fathers were just pursuing their unalienable rights -- even if it came at the expense of denying hundreds of others their human rights and pursuit of happiness. And while we’re at it, how many Native Americans signed the Louisiana Purchase? So even the “Emperor of Liberty” wears no clothes. (Too bad Carter didn’t write a play featuring Nat Turner, John Brown and Geronimo instead. LOL!)

 

Be that as it may, theatergoers should not discard The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord. This onstage rambling rumination is at its best when dramatizing and presenting these and related ideological issues. And that is what makes this philosophical theatrical treatise worth watching, along with a grand finale that is a well-staged, rapturous ode to the art of the written (not spoken!) word.

 

So to sum up, and to paraphrase Mssr. Dickens, perhaps ticket buyers can reach accord: The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discordis both “the best of times and the worst of times.”  

 

 

Discord runs through Nov. 23  at the ​Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village, CA 90024. For tickets: 310-208-5454; for more info: www.GeffenPlayhouse.com.

 

 

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STAGE REVIEW: CHOIR BOY

(Michael Shepperd) in Choir Boy. Photo by Michael Lamont.

 

Hit that perfect beat boy

 

By Ed Rampell

 

Choir Boy’s setting -- Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys -- is, for this reviewer, the most interesting, unique aspect of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s gay-themed drama. Historically-black educational institutions have, on occasion, been featured in productions, such as Denzel Washington’s superb 2007 movie, The Great Debaters. But for your Caucasian critic this milieu is relatively untraveled terrain and of keen interest, especially as his father taught in Boys High High School, an all-black and Latino facility in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

 

But Drew is very different from Boys High, a public school that’s part of the New York City school system. In addition to being private, Drew is also a religious school. So, just as, say, New York is a character in Woody Allen’s 1979 Manhattan, Drew’s ambiance hovers over Choir Boy -- although institutionally, not so much geographically.

 

The title character is Pharus Jonathan Young (Jeremy Pope), who aspires to becoming the prestigious choir master of Drew, which seems largely dependent for its economic survival on an annual fundraiser featuring the all male singers. Pharus must chart a tricky, precarious path as a gay youth completely surrounded by boys and men (alas, no female characters trod the boards in this play). This includes not only in the classroom, but in his dormitory in general, dorm room in particular, locker room and showers. Scenic designer David Zinn’s understated sets go with the flow, morphing from one scene to another depending upon their location requirements.

 

The play focuses on five young men attending the school, Headmaster Marrow (Michael Shepperd) and Mr. Pendleton (Leonard Kelly-Young has the role which was played by Austin Pendleton at Choir Boy’s Broadway premiere last year). He is this one-acter’s token white character. Pendleton is one of those archetypal (or stereotypical -- take your pick), rumpled Caucasians who has picked up the proverbial “white man’s burden” and is dedicated to educating minorities and Civil Rights. When he’s introduced, Pendleton goes verbally overboard, trying to impress the lads by getting down with the homies (or at least trying to). But later, with an impassioned speech about the “N” word which the homophobic, diffident Bobby Marrow (Donovan Mitchell) insists on using in full, Pendleton reveals his true colors as a Civil Rights crusader who’d marched with Dr. King.

 

(BTW, according to urban mythology, the physician and researcher Charles R. Drew helped invent the process of blood transfusions and died, when the hospital he was taken to after a car accident supposedly refused to give him a blood transfusion because they only had plasma from white people on hand. In any case, Drew did resist racial segregation when it came to donating blood. About a dozen schools are named after this medical pioneer, including a prep school, but none seem to be named the Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys.)

 

The playwright does a good job providing back stories for the five young men, especially through their long distance phone calls back home. These provide insights into their characters, what makes them tick and why these scholarship or full-tuition-paying students are attending this private prep school. For most, it is perceived as their ticket to advancing on to university and achieving in modern America.

 

Against this complicated background, Pharus is trying to come of age. As the eponymous choir boy strives to become a choir man, the effeminate Pharus must navigate his emerging sexuality and the strict code of conduct of the prep school, with its official school song of “Trust and Obey” --Presbyterian hymn. There is some full frontal (and back) nudity in Choir Boy, and McCraney takes on the stereotypes relating to the anatomy of black males. If you listen closely to the dialogue, he may be trying to debunk that myth, not simply reinforcing it. As the well-endowed AJ, Pharus’ roommate, Grantham Coleman strikes the right tone as a big brother figure watching out for the confused Pharus as he strives to make and find his way in the moral universe of the religious school and beyond its presumably ivy covered walls. (Both Coleman and Pope reprise the roles they previously played on Broadway.)

 

The play ran for almost two hours without an intermission. Its ensemble is well-directed by Trip Cullman, who also helmed Choir Boy on the Great White Way.

 

 

 

Choir Boy runs through Oct. 26 at the Gil Gates Theater at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village, CA 90024. For tickets: 310208-5454; www.GeffenPlayhouse.com.

 

L.A.-based reviewer Ed Rampell co-authored The Hawaii Movie and Television Book. (See: http://hawaiimtvbook.weebly.com/.) Rampell and co-author Luis Reyes will be signing books at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 6 at the bookstore Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105.  (See:Meet Ed..)     

 

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THEATER REVIEW: YES, PRIME MINISTER

A scene from Yes, Prime Minister.

We are amused

By Ed Rampell

Yes, Prime Ministeris in the tradition of the British drawing room comedy, which is characterized by witty repartee among usually upper class characters and largely set in the room of a house where guests are entertained. However, this work has one major difference: its drawing room is located in Chequers, the official countryside retreat of the British PM. That’s “PM” as in Yes, Prime Minister, the West End and BBC hit by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, which is now having its U.S. debut at the Geffen Playhouse.

As such, Yes, Prime Minister’s bristling dialogue is decidedly political and full of humorous social commentary about the British power elite, plus the expediency and opportunism that characterizes affairs (figuratively and literally) of state. The barbs about the BBC, celebrity activism and what may be the first drone strike joke launched from the stage of a major play fly fast and furious in English accents. There’s something rotten in the estate at Buckinghamshire, where the PM, his advisors and the Kumranistani Ambassador have gathered at Chequers to try to navigate a path more circuitous than a slalom run in order to clinch a deal with a (fictional) oil-rich Central Asian nation that could pull the U.K. and the European Union out of the grips of recession.

The careers -- and collective asses -- of the Prime Minister and his flunkies are also on the proverbial line. As members of the political class survival of their positions -- and pensions -- are first and foremost in their thoughts, with the well-being of the British people a sometimes distant second.

The New York-born Michael McKean more than holds his own, but as Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby Dakin Matthews almost steals the show. Appleby is the consummate career civil servant who speaks in the bureaucratese jargon that George Orwell denounced in 1984 and his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” wherein Orwell criticized politicians’ “inflated style… A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity… politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”

But keep your eyes on Sir Humphrey -- behind his funky functionary lingo he is the ultimate survivor, and he’s not about to be voted off the sceptered island. Jonathan Lynn adroitly directs his cast composed, surprisingly, mostly of Yanks, although Rogue Machine company member Ron Bottitta, who plays a cameraman and is the understudy for other roles, was born in London. The other cast members from the colonies include Jefferson Mays (a veteran of Broadway, off-Broadway and the big and little screens) as Bernard Woolley, the unctuous, eager to please goody-two-shoes Principal Private Secretary to the PM. Tara Summers (who co-starred on the tart Boston Legal TV series) excels as the younger, hipper, scheming, less scrupulous Special Advisor to the PM Claire Sutton. As the Kumranistani Ambassador Jerusalem-born Brian George (a veteran of TV sitcoms and dramas) saunters in and out of the Chequers drawing room in his slippers and robe. In a brief appearance as the BBC’s Director-General, Time Winters scores points about the relationship between the fourth estate and the state -- especially when the latter holds -- and pulls -- the purse strings. This is all the more delicious when one considers that a TV sitcom version of Yes, Prime Minister has aired on the Beeb, biting the hand that feeds it.

The single set by scenic designer Simon Higlett, a West End stalwart, seemed to this untutored eye to perfectly capture the architectural ambiance of Chequers, that rural residence that goes at least as far back as the 16^th century. Sound designers Andrea Cox and John Leonard’s sound effects almost literally had me jumping out of my seat a couple of times.

Yes, Prime Minister is not a play for a nitwit -- but for those who like their wit to be Brit, sly and wry, this reviewer resoundingly votes in the affirmative. Harrumph!


Yes, Prime Minister runs through July 14 at The Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village, CA 90024. For more information: 310-208-5454; www.GeffenPlayhouse.com

 

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THEATER REVIEW: RED HOT PATRIOT

Molly Ivins (Kathleen Turner) in Red Hot Patriot, The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins.

Bush-hells of fun

By Ed Rampell

Kathleen Turner can’t say that, can she? Oh, but the star of 1981’s Body Heat most certainly can – at least while she’s in character as the outspoken journalist Molly Ivins in Red Hot Patriot. The tall Texan, who was one of America’s leading literary lights of lefty letters, has tall boots to fill. But in what is essentially a one woman show Turner fully embodies Ivins, tossing off zesty zingers, one liners and cuss words that afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted with Ivins-esque aplomb.

The bioplay, lovingly written by Allison and Margaret Engel -- two sisters with reportorial backgrounds – covers Ivin's life, lost loves (thank you Vietnam War!), journalistic career, politics and illness in a production imbued with Ivins’ kick-sass atty-tude and humor, which always skewered the high and mighty on behalf of the lowly and powerless. Subtitled The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, the action takes place in scenic designer John Arnone’s set depicting a newsroom from a bygone era that has seen better days. Projection designer Maya Ciarrocchi’s images enliven the subject matter, including visuals of Ivins herself at various points in her life and career.

In this pre-digital newsroom Turner’s co-stars are a decidedly old fashioned AP machine that periodically delivers Associated Press bulletins, breaking news about historic events Ivins covered or, imaginatively, from the hard drinking Ivins’ own personal life. Matthew Van Oss occasionally appears briefly onstage as a copyboy who hands the news flashes to Turner in a non-speaking part (Van Oss should have been cast in the silent film The Artist).

The work shirt-clad Turner who scintillated the screen as a sultry siren in 1980s hits such as the classic film noir Body Heat (a brilliant parable of the Reagan era’s slimy corruption and venality), Romancing the Stone and The War of the Roses, is stouter now, but she’s more or less within the Geneva Conventions’ in terms of Ivins’ own physical presence. Turner’s Texas twang, delivery and ironic inflections captures Ivin’s manner of speaking (which I was lucky to hear in person in 2000 at the so-called Shadow Convention, a sort of left-leaning counterpart to the Democratic Party’s National Convention that took place nearby in Downtown L.A.). Although she’s no longer a sexy ingénue sizzling the screen, as directed by David Esbjornson, Turner’s Ivins generates plenty of brain heat.

The story, as told by Turner, recounts Ivins’ stints as a reporter for Texan dailies and as a co-editor of the Texas Observer. The Lone Star State’s political hi jinks provided great journalistic grist for Ivin's mill, but more importantly, helped place her on the national stage, with her firsthand knowledge and insights into Texan politicians, from the similarly witty Gov. Ann Richards to the Bushes, who put the nasty into dynasty. It was Ivins who coined George W. Bush’s rather fitting nickname – “Shrub” – which became the title of the first of her two biographies about this pretender to the presidential throne. The second of Ivins' Bush bios was, appropriately, called Bushwhacked, and it’s fair to say that Bush Jr. became this populist’s bête noir.

While the play makes much of Ivins’ Elvis obit for The New York Times, Ivins' longtime collaboration with her Texas Observer colleague, Lou DuBose, who also co-authored the Bush bios with her, is never mentioned. Nor are the lefty publications Ivins was long associated with, notably The Nation and The Progressive. These curious oversights by the sisters Engel are odd omissions vis-à-vis the columnist’s oeuvre.

However, the Engels’ script is strongest when describing the personal side of Ivins which impelled her into the fray on behalf of underdogs everywhere. Her relations with both parents were conflicted, especially with her militaristic, domineering, conservative father, whom his daughter caustically called “the General” and frequently clashed with. The death of a lover in Indochina further poured fuel on the fire of Ivins’ ire. The play correctly puts its finger on what motivates writers such as Ivins: a sense of outrage. Happily, for we, the people, Ivins expressed that outrage against the rich and powerful while defending the least of these among us. By the way, written as it is (well, obviously) by professional writers, Ivin Red Hot Patriot has lots of witty literary insights into the creative process of scribbling and doodling, and into we ink stained wretches who ink out a living, dipping quills into bottles of ink or pecking on keyboards.

Ivin's mortality, as she comes to grips with a fatal disease, is also movingly depicted by the ever quipping Turner. Death, where is thy zinger? Although Turner acquits herself well throughout this one act one woman show, she, and the play itself, is best in the final moments as a spectral Ivins delivers one final rabblerousing riposte from beyond the grave to the common people she so loved and had such a profound belief in and respect for. Turner’s final battle cry as Ivins is reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin’s speech in his 1940 anti-fascist masterpiece, The Great Dictator. The audience at the Geffen applauded and gave Turner -- and her character -- a well-deserved standing ovation. Author! Author!

Red Hot Patriot, The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins runs through Jan. 12 at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village, CA 90024. For more information: 310/208-2028; www.GeffenPlayhouse.com.

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