THEATER REVIEW : Existential Comedy Comes Out of ‘Funk’

They didn’t plan it this way, really. But the toppled columns and other architectural fragments on the set of playwright John Patrick Shanley’s “The Big Funk� at the Zephyr can’t help but take on added resonance in the wake of Los Angeles’ latest disaster.

Yet the shaken terrain under scrutiny in this West Coast premiere is a landscape of the psyche, not of the metropolis. In Act I, five Angst -filled souls whom you wouldn’t think would know one another have a round-robin of encounters. In Act II, the odd lot comes together for a dinner of steak and mutual abuse.

Best known for such plays as “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea� and such films as “Moonstruck,� Shanley likes to interject the offbeat into the everyday. Yet he’s also known for his hyper-realistic treatments of interpersonal conflicts--as in his latest work, the well-received “Four Dogs and a Bone,� currently playing in New York.

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“The Big Funk� is a playful play more in the former category than the latter. Sounding too much as if it were written by a guy who just discovered the kicks of psychoanalysis, “The Big Funk� is larded with dime-store Freudianisms and often too full of its heady self.

Still, it’s an ambitious existential comedy that’s considerably more sophisticated than this uneven production. Directed with a sometimes deft, sometimes lazy hand by Jules Aaron, much of the action is static--with the notable exception of a surprisingly graceful bathing scene.

The problem is that much of the acting is enervated and uninventive, as though the actors were in as much of a funk as their characters.

* “The Big Funk (A Casual Play),� Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., Hollywood, Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 7:30 & 10 p.m.; Sundays 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 20. $15. (213) 660-TKTS. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.