By Sarika Chawla

1984

The Actors' Gang at The Ivy Substation Theatre
9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City
Through May 20
Tuesday-Saturday 8 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m.
Tickets: $25
(310) 838-GANG
www.theactorsgang.com

As someone who firmly believes that no adaptation of 1984 can match the novel, it was hard to anticipate how the Actors' Gang would pull this one off. It's an ambitious undertaking, to be sure, but this version is unique enough to allow it to stand on its own as an artistic piece, while still retaining much of the text's richness. Still, it seems like there's a teeny bit of political self-indulgence on the director's part, so that this production is more focused on the message that we're all familiar with, rather than telling the story.

The Actors' Gang co-founder Tim Robbins directs, and it feels like this is a project that he was probably always meant to be involved with. Robbins makes a good choice in restructuring the novel to suit the stage -- the entire play takes place during Winston's inquisition, with the events leading up to this moment being re-enacted by party members. Of course, this also means that we're subjected to two hours of watching a man being tortured. It's not easy, and in fact, it's pretty exhausting by the end. There is never any possibility of witnessing hope or joy; there's just a sort of horrified acceptance punctuated only by fleeting moments of mild humor that are few and far between.

Maintaining such a whalloping level of emotions is no easy task, and P. Adam Walsh is excellent (if perhaps a little too well-built) as Winston. The inquisition takes place in real time, and through it all, he is able to oscillate between despair, resignation and defiance while still gasping in pain and fear. As the spare cast re-enacts his life, there is often an interesting blurring of past and present, particularly when 1st Party Member (Jason Denuszek) and 2nd Party Member (Shana Sosin) emulate the first time that Winston and Julia had sex -- they both get so into it that they have to be pried apart. It's a humorous moment, but there is also some significance that their behavior is excused because it was for the benefit of the party. This example of hypocrisy is something unique to this adaptation, which makes up for some of Winston's internal thoughts that had to be excised in the transition from novel to stage.

Of course, Robbins misses no opportunity to emphasize the parallels between Orwell's nightmarish vision and the current political climate. But really, this is nothing terribly new or even exciting. Those literary references have been invoked in regards to government since the book's publication, and while it may seem to hit a little close to home right now ("We're at war with Eurasia! No East Asia! No, Iraq! Iran!") ,no one is going to get all riled up or politically motivated by this play. What will get audiences going are the strong performances within an emotionally charged play that makes us examine our own modern sensibilities while paying homage to a classic story.

The Children's Hour

Celebration Theatre
7051-B Santa Monica Blvd., L.A.
Through May 7
Thursday-Saturday 8 p.m., Sunday 3 p.m.
Tickets: $20
(323) 957-1884

The once groundbreaking theme of Lillian Hellman's 1934 play The Children's Hour has lost some of its oomph in this modern-day revival, but it still remains somewhat culturally resonant. Audiences are aware that, even today, a bigoted reaction to a perceived lesbian relationship isn't exactly unheard of, so that the play retains much of its social relevance in gay and lesbian issues. However, uneven performances and an incredibly slow pace make it hard to maintain focus on the fact that this is a historical play, as it tends to get overly caught up in its own melodrama.

When Mary (Stephanie Marquis), a spoiled student, lashes out at her teachers by accusing them of being lovers, the snooty little town reacts in anger. The teachers in question, Martha (Sarah Taylor) and Karen (Liz Pellini), confident in their innocence, hold their heads up high but fail to clear their names. Ultimately, their lives are reduced to hiding indoors with nowhere to escape, as the distasteful headlines have reached far and wide.

For the Celebration Theatre, this production may have not been the best choice, as it doesn't quite reach out to its gay audiences. It is a sobering portrait of a very different time, but it's actually tough to watch something in which the very concept of lesbianism is so vilified. Matthew Bankston directs, and for the most part, he is sensitive to this fact, but the general "eww" factor over lesbianism is hard to escape from.

The first two acts work well in establishing the characters and the impending conflict. Marquis is deliciously vicious as Mary in a soap-opera villainess kind of way. It's a little inexplicable how or why she wields so much power over her classmates, but the nature of the character is actually quite one-dimensional -- there's never any explanation for Mary's awfulness so any lack of depth in Marquis' performance is entirely forgivable.

The tension reaches its highest point in the second act, as the accused face off against their young nemesis. A sense of frustration is heightened by a strong performance from Laura Julian as Mrs. Tilford, a fussy old woman who is blind to her granddaughter's faults. In dealing with this injustice, Taylor really shines over Pellini, who tends to handle a whole slew of emotions with limited facial expressions. Donna Pieroni is amusing as Mrs. Mortar, Martha's twaddling old aunt, whose selfish behavior has detrimental effects on the situation.

Disappointment lies primarily in the third act. It's as if all the energy is expended on the accusation scene, and there is nothing left to deal with the repercussions. While the slow pacing of this act is presumably deliberate -- after all, the two women's lives have been absolutely deflated -- there are just too many overdramatic long pauses and periods of apparent deep thought to keep any sort of momentum going. In the latter moments Taylor does a brilliant job in struggling with her inner feelings, but once she leaves the stage, the scene continues to drag on. At this point, any sort of conclusion, tragic or not, would have been a welcome relief.