Two Pinter Plays but Only One Cast Comes Through

Harold Pinter’s “The Collection” and “The Lover” were first presented on television in 1961 and 1963, respectively, before they were converted into short stage plays.

Detailing sexual role-playing and power games, with plenty of Pinter’s early sense of mystery lurking in the corners, they were televised in England, amazingly enough, in the same years when most of America was watching TV westerns and “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

The staging by Anthony Caldarella at Hudson Backstage Theatre, set unobtrusively in the present, is not so amazing. “The Lover” holds up, but the cast that’s appearing on Fridays and Sundays in the double-cast “The Collection” has problems.

“The Lover” depicts a proper English suburban home in which the wife has scheduled afternoon sessions with a lover. We quickly realize, however, that the “lover,” Max, is really the husband, and that he’s increasingly restive in the role.

Henry Olek dons a black leather jacket and shades for his Max interlude--a more radical costume change than Pinter prescribed, but one that certainly delineates the two characters.

Olek’s performance itself also draws an amusing line between the stuffy husband and the stuffy husband’s impersonation of a swinger. At one point, while playing the husband, he exercises his upper body with stretchy bands, as if he’s determined to look good when he takes off his shirt as Max.

Susan Priver’s wife, befitting the script, seems more at ease in her sexual fantasies than does her mate. She works up a fine sulk when it becomes apparent that he wants to quit playing the game.

“The Collection” is about two couples whose boundaries are temporarily porous, as one man accuses another of sleeping with his wife, much to the consternation of the alleged seducer’s older gay lover and mentor. All four of the characters work in the fashion industry.

In the Fridays and Sundays cast, David Purdham and Brian Foyster are excellent as the snide older man and his suggestive, somewhat androgynous housemate. Colin McCabe has a properly menacing look as the aggrieved husband, but he delivers his lines in a mumbled monotone. And Yvette Brooks doesn’t suggest the wife’s sly, manipulative side, playing only the wounded innocent.

Don Shirley

“The Lover” and “The Collection,” Hudson Backstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 4 p.m. Ends Sept. 29. $20. (323) 856-4200. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

In ‘Grasmere,’ a Delicate Portrayal of Literary Souls

In the literary love story “Grasmere,” people’s feelings overflow in gorgeous cascades of words.

This fictional meditation on the lives and poems of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge is set in 1802 as Coleridge pays an extended visit to the home that Wordsworth and his younger sister, Dorothy, share in the village of Grasmere in England’s Lake District.

Over the course of that year, emotions cycle through their own spring, summer, fall and winter in this delicate and hauntingly beautiful presentation by Chautauqua Theatre Alliance at the Egyptian Arena Theatre.

Speaking of Dorothy, Wordsworth and himself, Coleridge once commented that they were three persons with one soul. In 1802, they were in their early 30s. Wordsworth and Coleridge had produced the first edition of their influential “Lyrical Ballads” but were beginning to advance along separate career paths, with Dorothy as companion and muse.

Playwright Kristina Leach tries to imagine how deeply Dorothy (played by Annie Di Martino) must have loved these two very important men in her life. “Grasmere” is seen through Dorothy’s eyes, as her happy, almost married life with her brother (Logan Sledge) expands to admit Coleridge (Aaron G. Lamb), then Mary Hutchinson (Darcy Blakesley), who would become Wordsworth’s wife.

Under Joe Arnold’s direction, the poets’ friendship is a playful rivalry. While Coleridge begs Wordsworth for help in figuring out what to do with the albatross in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” for instance, Wordsworth teasingly waggles Coleridge’s handwritten pages so that they look like a bird in flight.

Meanwhile, Dorothy channels her literary impulses into a journal that she tends to leave where the men can read it. Exploring a theme similar to those in Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” and David Auburn’s “Proof,” Leach looks at the chauvinism that so often has excluded women’s contributions from history’s annals.

The story’s focus becomes diffused after this development, and purists will note that Leach has been heavy-handed with some facts (not least of which is that, by 1802, “Ancient Mariner” already had been in print for several years).

But Leach, a recent graduate of Cal State Fullerton, and her play are off to a promising start. The school’s production of “Grasmere” (which is, after minor script changes, what’s being presented here by Chautauqua) was invited to be part of the American College Theater Festival’s national showcase earlier this year at the Kennedy Center, and the play was runner-up for a student playwriting award.

Daryl H. Miller

“Grasmere,” Egyptian Arena Theatre, 1625 N. Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Sept. 22. $18. (323) 960-8865.

‘Honey, I’m Home’ Pushes Premise Too Far

Considerable deja vu haunts “Honey, I’m Home” at the Knightsbridge Theatre Los Angeles. This latest from the parties responsible for the 1999 production “It Started With a Lie” maneuvers Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden” into a referentially saturated fey Feydeau.

The premise concerns television co-stars Luke Donahue (the courageous Alex Montesino) and Justin Tyler (co-author Bruce Hart). Their off-screen liaison becomes tabloid fodder when Justin is lost at sea.

The ensuing public sympathy revives outed widower Luke’s career, so agent Max (the adept Peter Szeliga) advises him to keep opportunistic new inamorato Brett (Lee Traylor) under wraps.

Complications involve a star-struck designer (the game Stephen Rock), the malevolent series producer (Paul Duff, shrewdly underplaying until a heavy-handed climax) and a vitriolic interviewer (co-author Paul Vander Roest, who also directs).

Upon Justin’s return, followed by fellow castaway Rod (the effective Brian Grosdidier, a ringer for Douglas Sills), all heck breaks loose.

That this synthetic concoction seems a marked improvement on its predecessor is a marginal achievement. Although likable and determined, Vander Roest’s industry vulture and Hart’s butch action hero are notably implausible, typifying the absence of objective viewpoint.

Their script is fitfully amusing, exhausting its brightest element--the spousal resurrection, more fruitfully appropriated by the 1940 film “My Favorite Wife”--before Act 1 has ended, resulting in vacuum-packaged contrivances and an embarrassing attempt to justify nudity.

Theatergoers who kept “Lie” going may well enjoy “Honey,” given that they represent its primary audience.

David C. Nichols

“Honey, I’m Home,” Knightsbridge Theatre Los Angeles, 1944 Riverside Drive, L.A. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 15. $22. (626) 440-0821. Mature audiences. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

‘Duct Tape & Dreams’: Perceptive but Predictable

The theater world loves a play about plays (“Noises Off,” “A Chorus of Disapproval”) almost as much as Hollywood loves a movie about movies (“Sunset Boulevard,” “The Player”). So a comedy about life in Los Angeles’ small-theater scene--where the ability to laugh at hardship is almost a prerequisite--seems like a great idea.

In “Duct Tape & Dreams” at the Actors Workout Studio, however, the idea doesn’t translate into a great play.

Playwright Jenelle Lynn Riley accurately pinpoints many of small theater’s drawbacks, such as having actors depart at a moment’s notice for better-paying work, or being so short of cash that props must be scavenged from neighborhood dumpsters.

But she almost always goes for laughs that can be seen coming from a mile away, and director Scott White pushes them still further, so that they can be seen from several area codes away.

The stock characters include a temperamental director (White, replacing Will Bowles) and a very actor-y actor (Chris Chauncey). Then there’s the boy-toy performer (Trey Stafford) who flirts outrageously with the director even as he makes an extravagant show of smooching with his dim-bulb, surgically enhanced actress-fiancee (Sarah McElligott). (The fiancee ends up being cast, by the way, because she has a cousin who works for The Times. Ha-ha. Very funny.)

Fortunately, Riley has thrown in a couple of characters who are somewhat easier to root for: a quiet but competent guy (Blake Gardner) who’s always overlooked and a sweet-natured, just-arrived, stars-in-her-eyes gal (Lena Bouton).

In a wry bit of casting, Riley plays the go-to gal who writes the script, produces it, designs and builds the set, and tackles any number of other tasks for this typically underfunded small-theater production.

D.H.M.

“Duct Tape & Dreams,” Actors Workout Studio, 4735 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Sept. 21. $10. (818) 506-3903. Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes.