Last ChanceTheater”Dog Mouth”--One of L.A.’s most distinctive...

Last Chance

Theater

“Dog Mouth”--One of L.A.’s most distinctive home-grown playwrights, John Steppling has spent the last few years in Europe, a fugitive from the soulless grind of the California dream machine. For Steppling, the current production of “Dog Mouth” at the Evidence Room proves both a homecoming and a departure.

The setting of “Dog Mouth”--the Arizona desert--is, in itself, a statement of intent for Steppling. In this stark desert landscape, there is no there there--nothing to covet and little to desire--just a train track and sand, the central components of Jason Adams’ strikingly spare set.

Dog Mouth (Stephen Davies), the protagonist of the play, lives an existence as bare as the country he inhabits. The head of a murderous hobo gang, Dog Mouth entertains no apparent need for human connection, save for his criminal conniving with scruffy underlings and the occasional roll in the sand with Nyah (Nia Gwynne), his pregnant young girlfriend. Once a noted breeder of fighting dogs, Dog Mouth is considering buying a pit bull from Weeks (Hugh Dane), yet he wants nothing to do with Nyah or her child....When Nyah asks him to “feel” their child moving in her womb, Dog Mouth must pull back--or suffer a fatal fall. A have-not with a vengeance, he’s an elemental figure--Lear on a sandy heath, cast out by his own design.

F. Kathleen Foley

Padua Playwrights Productions and the Evidence Room at Evidence Room, 2220 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (213) 381-7118. Today--Sunday, 8 p.m. Ends Sunday. $20.

Also ending this weekend:

“Worldly Acts”--These fresh, startling and wickedly well-crafted one-acts developed by New York’s Urban Empire theater company and Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope: All Story magazine close Sunday at the Tiffany Theater, 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 289-2999.

“A Royal Menagerie: Porcelain Animals From Dresden”--The display of 14 large Meissen porcelain animals made between 1730 and 1735 closes Sunday at the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A., (310) 440-7300. Ends Sunday.

“Queer(ing) Warhol: Andy Warhol’s (Self-) Portraits”--

Show of photos that capture Warhol as a performance artist closes Sunday at the UCR California Museum of Photography, 3824 Main St., Riverside, (909) 787-4787.