‘South Central Rain’ at Pacific Theatre Ensemble; ‘Diary of Anne Frank’ at Dynarski; ‘Collusions’ at Matrix; ‘American Pie’ at the Cast

Early this year, a saloon drama set in the sleazy milieu of jockeys, “Don’t Go Back to Rockville,” attracted fanfare and critical acclaim. Now 26-year old playwright Jamie Baker is back with a strong sequel entitled “South Central Rain,” again set in Louisville and reprising some of the “Rockville” characters.

The central figure in that first play was a bitter, boozing jockey suspended during the 1944 Kentucky Derby. In “South Central Rain,” he has just been laid to rest 30 years later by his quarrelsome extended family. We meet all dozen of them one by one as they tumble through the screen door of a clapboard house, ranting and brawling.

The dead patriarch’s win-at-all-costs legacy informs the action. Playwright Baker’s alter ego is the teen-age narrator/grandson (sensitively played by David Officer) who struggles to break free from family poisons.

He pointedly describes how his grandfather fixed races at Churchill Downs with dirty riding tactics. “Men running around in circles hitting each other and getting left deep in the pack” is the youth’s metaphor for the callow jockeying in his own ne’er-do-well family.

Talk about down home. Director Victor Pappas whips the uproarious rancor into a dramatic stretch run at the Pacific Theatre Ensemble (where “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” was originally produced; it reopens in Burbank Sept. 22 in a Victory Theatre production.)

Baker does need to find a faster method to distinguish among all these offspring and their in-laws, but the relationships do come together in a Southern family saga acted with ensemble zest, spread over a sunset and a sunrise, and embracing a funeral and a divorce.

The cast list in the theater program is, not so fancifully, a racing form and gives odds. One long shot, aptly posted at 30-1, is Scott Lincoln’s raucous portrait of a violent father. His final bravado is expressed through lyrical baseball imagery; the scene beautifully betrays the fear of a man watching his children and his fed-up wife (a terrific, gnarled performance by Catherine Telford) split for California.

A bare stage of a front yard is offset by designer Cole Anderson’s textured porch setting and Nicholas Hassitt’s modulated lighting design. This was announced as a workshop production.

Baker is now writing the third play in an autobiographical trilogy. The air in his plays is bright, even in darkness, and his dialogue and characters crackle.

At 705 1/2 S. Venice Blvd., Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., until Sept. 18. Suggested donation: $7. (213) 306-3943.

‘Diary of Anne Frank’ A blond Anne Frank? Well, why not? Credit actress Tricia Cast with forswearing a black wig and going at it. This is a competently acted, physically ambitious production at the Gene Dynarski Theater.

The production’s momentum needs tightening, but “The Diary of Anne Frank” has been around 32 years and it still remains the definitive dramatization of fear and spirit in a world of genocide, even though we never see a Nazi.

Cast, a regular on “The Young and the Restless,” is 22 but must play a girl who is 14 growing to 16. Most Anne Franks succeed or fail in that backward stretch. Cast lacks luminosity in the role, but she nicely captures her character’s girlish impetuosity and later, her melancholy flowering. In the waning moments, though, with Germans outside the door, Cast blows the big, echoing line to which the whole play builds: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

The line is almost beatific and Cast’s delivery sounds like she’s reciting it instead of feeling it. Director H. Wynn Pearce needs to refocus the moment.

Producer Rich Cast (the star’s father, who plays the fussy dentist Dussel) signed on some effective support, notably Herb Isaacs’ easy dignity as Anne’s father.

Also impressive among the 10 actors are Sorrell Wayne as the agonizing and flamboyant Mrs. Van Daan, Heidi Shilling in the play’s most difficult role as Anne’s retiring sister, Howard Johnston’s stolid Dutch youth, and, as Anne’s mother, Flora Burke who surprises with a jolting, long-suppressed outburst at the callow Van Daans.

The dank, detailed, vaulting set design by Wally Huntoon and the murky lighting scheme are full of dimension.

At 5600 Sunset Blvd., Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 p.m., through Sept. 18. Tickets: $15. (213) 466-1767.

‘Collusions’ This two-character, semi-autobiographical, father-son drama, a visiting production at the Matrix Theatre, suffers from a form that’s more personal therapy session than sustained drama.

Playwright Michael Levittan co-stars as the son with Robert Costanzo as his defensively boisterous father. They render frayed characters unbearing their souls to you the audience. What you get is the semblance of a real-life talk show passing for a play.

Director Ed Couppee balances emotional pyrotechnics with some raffish tender coexistence. But the work’s expository framework seldom spills into drama because these private wars have no cohesive structure.

The strongest, most affecting scene finds an anguished Costanzo falling to his hands and knees and slapping the stage in a painful release of past suppressions. Suddenly the emotion is in real (dramatic)) time, but it comes too late. The lesson here is that theater must show life, not rehash it.

At 7657 Melrose Ave., Saturdays and Sundays, 8 p.m., through Sept. 11. Tickets: $10. (213) 466-1767.

‘American Pie’ Playwright Michael Lynch’s two slices of Americana at the Cast are linked as reverie pieces but also once removed from any vital signs. They barely breathe.

In the loony, lightweight “Letter From Leo Gorcey,” a porkpie-topped, malaprop-spouting character (Charles Bouvier) fantasizes that he’s Leo Gorcey chumming with Dead End Kids Gab Dell and Huntz Hall. A compromising encounter with a 15-year-old vixen who is no fantasy propels him into reality. Two reasons to see this curiosity are Kent Minault as a terrific, gangly, bedazed Huntz Hall and Joleen Lutz as the spoiled, sexual viper. (Her insidious, off-hand style belies a great sense of control.) Other than that, forget it.

The more substantive one-act (both shows are directed by Peter Tripp) is “Sister Gloria’s Pentecostal Baby.” It charts another mind trip, that of a one-time boy preacher and soldier now reduced to a wheelchair-bound young man (well played by Richard Harder) reliving emotional wounds. These maimings unfold in flashback scenes with a too-loving Gospel-spouting mother (a rich turn by Phyllis Applegate), a distant father (Kyle-Scott Jackson), a tough drill sergeant (Michael Leopard), and a provocative fiancee (Deborah Swisher).

But we don’t get close to these characters, always seeing them from a distance. The staging and acting are artful, but the play, ultimately, is enervating because we’re outside looking in.

At 804 N. El Centro Ave., Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets: $12. (213) 462-0265.