STAGE REVIEW : More Light Needed on ‘Deathwatch’

If Jean Genet’s “The Maids” can be played by male actors--and Genet recommends it--then why can’t his prison play “Deathwatch” be performed by women?

It doesn’t seem a particularly far-out idea at the Powerhouse. It doesn’t seem a particularly interesting idea, either.

One reason is that director Rene Migliaccio approaches the play in such a straight-line way. He simply reverses the sexes and makes it a fable set in a woman’s prison.

That’s less devious--and Genet is nothing if he’s not devious--than setting up a distance between the actors and the characters and presenting the story as a critique of male bravado, seen through female eyes.

Perhaps it would have taken a woman director to bring that off. But Migliaccio runs into another problem in his attempt to stylize the play and make it universal.

His devices include mime makeup, a very dark set and lots of expressive gestures--clawing hands and the like. We get a sense of caged animals pacing and pouncing under a noxious moon. (Chris H. Leplus was lighting designer.)

This is telling, and not inappropriate. Everybody knows that Genet’s plays are Black Masses. But this one also establishes its three characters quite clearly--who they are, who they secretly fear they aren’t, how desperately each needs not to be odd-man-out.

The shifts in allegiance should be underscored in the show’s choreography, and perhaps are at the Powerhouse, but it’s hard to tell with so much happening in the dark. At this wattage it’s also hard to connect voices with faces. The dialogue takes on a generalized choral air, like that of the three witches in “Macbeth.”

After an hour, even a Black Mass gets tedious, and this one isn’t all that black--just murky. But the actors deserve some kind of award for the punishment they take and the energy they give. Taylor Donlan is Green Eyes, Wendy Jewell is Mo (nee Maurice) and Lisa Zebrow is George Lefranc, now Georgia. Shawna Casey plays the guard.

Plays at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays, through June 26. Tickets $12. 3116 2nd St., Santa Monica. (213) 392-6829. ‘DEATHWATCH’

Jean Genet’s play, at the Powerhouse. Director Rene Migliaccio, after his production for the Drama Theatre Company of Paris. Presented by Resident Alien Productions. Executive producer Derek McGrath. Producer Wendy Jewell. Lighting design Chris H. Leplus. Set design D.R.W.. Costumes Kimberley Brower. Sound David Battino. Makeup Pamela Malloy. With Shawna Caey, Taylor Donlan, Wendy Jewell, Lisa Zebrow.