A TOO-CONTEMPORARY ‘CITY HEARTS’

In its obsession with “relationships,� this decade isn’t very different from the previous one. So M. B. Valle’s quartet of recent New York City one-acts, “City Hearts� (at the Burbank Little Theatre), is right up to date.

It’s also unpleasantly contemporary in another way: TV writing substitutes for honest writing.

Take Norma and Ted (Valerie Landsburg and Patrick Pankhurst) in “The Ride Home.� They’re a couple with a lot of problems: He thinks they should talk about them; she thinks he’s smothering; they’re both unconscionably jealous. Certainly the course of their fight in his car has the ebb and flow of verbal/sexual manipulation (though Norma’s black one-liners are nothing but audience manipulation), and Landsburg and Pankhurst develop an effective pace while exploring critical character flaws that charge the humor. But theirs is a crisis with an involved history behind it; Valle’s neat and cute resolution is a complete cheat to this glaring reality.

Nearly the same can be said for “At the Movies,� involving a lonely accountant (Greg Mullavey) trying to persuade a woman waiting ahead of him in a movie line (Susan Edwards) not to shoot herself once inside. Her crisis is deeper than Norma and Ted’s, yet Valle’s way out is shallower, discarding Jules Feiffer’s suicidal New York for unearned rosiness.

With the kids of “In the Park,� Beatrice and William (Landsburg and Todd Anderson), we get to some serious conflict delivered with refreshing vigor. Beatrice is into war toys, while William is upset about environmental destruction (Valle likes to reverse roles for no interesting reason).

Yet when they talk about their divorced parents, they become resonantly true people. Landsburg explodes with the nervous energy of a kid trying to buzz around her difficulties (she can become uncomfortably, affectingly quiet a moment later).

“Sidewalk Talk� is all New York cliche. Imagine a Brooklyn Italian couple with a busted car, looming unemployment and lot of words for each other and you’ll likely imagine something more memorable than what emerges here. Textbook direction is by Gary Blumsack.

Performances at 1111 W. Olive Ave., Burbank, Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., ends June 14; (818) 848-7791.

‘MANEUVERS’

What if psychiatry, in cahoots with the U.S. Army, tried to “cure� homosexual soldiers with Pavlovian therapy? They wouldn’t nowadays, of course, so James L. Bloor sets his play, “Maneuvers,� in the ignorant early ‘60s. What it’s meant to prove, beyond the notion that some doctors can extend personal vendettas into their professional work, is quite murky.

Making this technocratic doctor a woman (Molly L. Starr) infuses the proceedings with misogynist colors that cloud the action and ideas. But the cards are stacked so completely that we ride along the surface of this highly manipulated drama or we cease caring. The soldier guinea pigs are obvious victims (but sometimes so monstrous in private that our empathy is extinguished), while the doctor’s lab assistant is even more obviously a closet gay (the sorriest attempt at a plot surprise all year). Unsurprisingly, tragedy strikes, gay identity wins out, and science botches it.

Sidney Friedman sluggishly directs a cast not at all settled into the play. It’s why the lab experiment seems like a Radio Shack demonstration and the military atmosphere has all the authority of a Boy Scout camp.

Performances at Carpet Company Stage, 5262 W. Pico Blvd., Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., ends July 6; (213) 388-7466.

‘AERO SHOW’

The report from the Fig Tree Theatre last Friday night is that a little girl named Christine completely upstaged clown/mime Stanley Allan Sherman in his uneven attempt to mix street-theater foolery with the clown’s art, called “The Aero Show Featuring the Star Spangled Banner.�

Christine, sitting on the edge of her seat in the front row, coaxed Sherman along when he couldn’t find his runaway coat (like most of the stuff here, an overlong gag), or charmingly jumped right on stage and straight into Sherman’s birthday cake practical joke. Her curtsy brought down the house.

Sherman’s performance was another matter. Besides seeming strangely uncomfortable on stage and not terribly aware of the running time of a segment, his act never catches our breath, astonishes us or stirs that feeling common in the fine clown/mime’s audience of wishing to recapture the moment just passed. Despite a loony finale that does wonders with paper airplanes and bags of baby powder, Sherman’s show is barely above street-performance level.

Performances at 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays at 6 p.m., runs indefinitely; (213) 463-6893.

‘ANDREWTALK’

Kids are also foremost in Carolyn Allport’s “Andrewtalk� at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, simply because Allport is thoroughly fascinated by them. Especially her own--son Andrew. Like a Shakespearean character coming on stage to play out an off-stage incident, Allport tells about the good and not-so-good times of Andrew’s first five years with understated style and lighthearted wisdom, guided by Paula Marchese’s direction.

She doesn’t always pull off Andrew’s rambunctiousness and curiosity, nor a little boy’s vocalese, but we’re drawn to Andrew: He has his mom’s imagination. This, combined with unexpected intimations of mortality (finding Andrew on the edge of a high windowsill, scaring the wits out of him in a ghost costume), casts Allport’s personal tale in an illuminating light.

Final performances at 254 S. Robertson Blvd. at 3 p.m. Sunday; (213) 874-3678.

‘JAGUAR’

Maybe playwright Jeff Sheppard has had his play “Jaguar� (now at the Boyd Street Theatre) boiling inside him for some time. The telltale signs are all there: epic scope (fading boxer story and the fall of Montezuma), Serious Themes (death, life, everything in between) and Tragic Results (the boxer’s trainer dies). This is only a guess, but it serves to pass the time while enduring this bloated, arch and intermissionless two-hour endurance test.

The boxer’s trip back home after fixing a fight is a play enough, though James Higdon neither looks, feels nor sounds like he’s ever known the ring. But Sheppard, hardly abetted by director Rick Habib’s careless handling of the players and scenography or Bob Lesione’s rhythmless jazz accompaniment, insists on imposing the Aztecs’ collapse and all its latent metaphors on this little story. Rather than questions about how the strong fall, what’s on the mind is how a downtown Los Angeles theater dares stage a show about fighters and Aztecs with no Chicano actors.

Performances at 305 Boyd St., Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., ends June 29; (213) 680-4978.