‘Portrait’ Paints Reactions to Goya’s ‘Maja’

The shifting tensions between artistic expression and social propriety receive wry scrutiny in Laura Shamas’ “Portrait of a Nude” at West Coast Ensemble’s comfortable new La Brea digs.

Tracing two centuries of controversy surrounding Francisco Goya’s “Naked Maja,” a groundbreaking painting of a naked woman in unabashedly erotic recline, Shamas’ thoughtful, carefully researched play isn’t nearly as risque as its subject. In fact, director Jules Aaron opens the piece with the polite scholarly aura of a PBS special, re-creating the capitulation of a reluctant Goya (Edmund L. Shaff) to repeated entreaties by his longtime model (Erin Donovan) to paint her sans clothing. He must then face the consequences in an interrogation by two smarmy church officials (Robert Ross and Peter Lavin).

Scene-shifting to France during the birth of the Impressionist movement, we learn that Edouard Manet (Ross) met with similar opposition to his “Maja”-inspired “Olympia” portrait, amid some occasionally heavy-handed rhetoric about the oppression of artistic freedom.

Shamas scores more direct hits with deft satire in the contemporary-era second half. Donovan appears as a prissy aide to the British royals pressuring an increasingly exasperated Spanish cultural affairs official (Shaff) to arrange a private viewing of the “Maja” during Princess Di’s honeymoon tour of the Prado museum. “We can’t have the princess associated with even a hint of scandal,” she clucks imperiously.

Nancy Hinman makes a hilarious Diana, and achieves an appealing balance of sympathy and silliness in the centerpiece sequence about a Penn State University professor who filed a sexual harassment claim because she had to teach in front of a “Maja” reproduction.

Shaff plays a flustered college dean and Donovan the inflammatory activist who seems to have wandered in from David Mamet’s “Oleanna.” Caught in the middle, Hinman’s character opts for a common sense solution that pointedly sidesteps the folly of looking to legal protocols for our ethical foundations. Maybe there’s more than a history lesson here.

* “Portrait of a Nude,” West Coast Ensemble/La Brea, 522 N. La Brea Ave. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends March 10. $15-$18. (213) 871-1052. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.