Toying With Historical Figures

Since theater can toy with history in a way that would make historians flee in terror, Lonny Chapman’s toying with the lives and facts of author-journalist Ambrose Bierce, feminist-anarchist Emma Goldman and the inimitable Theodore Roosevelt in Chapman’s two one-acts at his Group Repertory Theatre is just another way of reflecting on the past.

Now, if only this reflecting were more interesting, then we’d have something.

Both “The Wickedest Man in San Francisco” (on Bierce) and “Emma & Teddy” (on you-know-who) tend to make the mistake of assuming that if the subjects are compelling enough, the plays inevitably will be too. Here are Bierce, the fiercest American satirist of all and a man whose life inspired a thousand myths, and the colorful pair of firebrand Goldman and progressive Roosevelt, clashing but having more in common than they imagined. The lasting effect should be lively, but instead writer-director Chapman’s show has the feeling of being slightly starchy, even while his actors are having a fine time.

The opening of “Wickedest Man” does suggest an imagination to echo Bierce’s. An actor (Chris Winfield) appears onstage, announcing that he’s the reincarnation of Bierce and will recreate the speculative last day of his life. (The actor even introduces his supporting cast, with John Keller playing the male roles and Shandi Sinnamon playing the women.) Bierce finds himself holed up at a hacienda in Chihuahua in 1914 during the Mexican Revolution, certain that Pancho Villa, whom he has greatly displeased, is coming to kill him.

Without going into much detail, the actor-as-Bierce recounts elements of his life, such as his marrying a rich woman mainly to pay for a European tour to cozy up to the intelligentsia, his saving of fellow Union soldiers’ lives during such battles as Shiloh and being hired by William Randolph Hearst to be his star columnist.

Chapman’s version amounts to quite a life, but it’s not remotely as extraordinary as the real thing, and his theatrical devices wear thin extremely fast. The wildest episodes of the Bierce saga are missing (no mention, for example, of his skull’s nearly being shattered by a Rebel bullet during the Civil War, or of his westward adventures), and Bierce’s caustic, brilliant voice is missing as well, except in a word-play contest with Keller’s Mark Twain. Hearst never sent Bierce to report on Villa and Mexico (Bierce had left the magnate’s employment long before and ventured to Mexico on his own, never to be heard from again), yet it’s the play’s dramatic linchpin.

Winfield cuts a striking figure as Bierce, though, and that, along with the cast of “Emma & Teddy,” keeps these bits of speculative history afloat. In this play, Chapman doesn’t overreach for stage devices but simply imagines what would have happened had Goldman (Joy Ruby) and Roosevelt (Michael Twaine) randomly met while enjoying a nice day in Central Park. The then-vice president seems a bit too eager to discuss his life story with a woman he’s barely met, but other than that, there’s a lack of quirky, individual psychology to these characters that keeps them stubbornly flat. (Contrast this Goldman, for example, with the Goldman of “Ragtime.”)

But Ruby and Twaine have a ball with history and each other: She utters Goldman’s spirited anarchist perspective with piquant charm, appealing to Roosevelt’s deep maleness and exposing contradictions he’s barely felt before. They never really debate fiercely, as the real figures would have had they met, but this good-natured political battle of the sexes is delivered with a sense of fun that’s unmistakably American.

BE THERE

“The Wickedest Man in San Francisco” and “Emma & Teddy,” Lonny Chapman’s Group Repertory Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Sept. 30. $16. (818) 769-7529. Running time: 2 hours.