The Message Gets Lost in the Medium in ‘Lava’

Samuel Beckett’s brief “Breath” is a comical afterthought in this Son of Semele production at Theatre/Theater. The main business of the evening is New York experimental theater maven Richard Foreman’s “Lava,” a metaphysical tirade about the limitations of language, seen here in a spirited but problematic staging.

A self-proclaimed control freak, Foreman usually helms his own work at his home base, the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre in New York. Perhaps it’s the absence of his experienced hand that explains this somewhat scattershot outing. However, director Al Sgro and company attack Foreman’s arcane text boldly, if not always coherently.

Festooned with hanging propellers, David Edwards’ set consists of a simple playing area hemmed in by blackboards on all sides. Enter three sexy, punked-out schoolgirl/vamps, along with three buttoned-down businessmen in suits. In between bouts of live percussion and intellectually inaccessible tirades, all take turns writing frenetically on the blackboards. By play’s end, the stage walls are almost completely covered with bizarre chalk messages.

The plot of “Lava” is obviously not the message. An explosion of semantics, the play seems deliberately tautological, a repetitive exercise in cerebral silliness. The point? One suspects that it has something to do with the difficulties of human communication, and the barrier that words present to genuine emotional expression.

If that is the point, then it’s particularly ironic that certain actors in the cast have unintentionally faulty stage diction. The complicated physical business, however, is briskly executed, and while Foreman’s intentions may remain elusive, we admire the audacity of his youthful interpreters.

*

“Lava” and “Breath,” Theatre/Theater, Pacific Theater Building, 4th Floor, 6425 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Sept. 16. $20. (323) 860-9970. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.