​Watching writers write just isn’t exciting, which is why the writers in Neil Simon’s Laughter on the 23rd Floor don’t spend much time doing so on stage. Instead, their brainstorming for “The Max Prince Show” is diverted by put-downs, clashes of ego, mutual confrontations with personal and mutual insecurities, and unapologetic slapstick. Much of the latter comes from their boss, played at North Coast Rep by its artistic director, David Ellenstein. Simon’s thinly veiled reminiscence of his salad days working on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” is sweet and silly, as is this production directed by Tom Markus. Everyone overplays his or her hand to an extent, though both Phil Johnson and Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, as two of the writers, succeed with restraint and reaction, too. Laughter isn’t as cutesy as some of Simon’s better known plays, and that’s also to the good.

​            You don’t come across a lot of relationship dramas centered on a grandson and his grandmother. But Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles, onstage at ion theatre in Hillcrest, is just that. Self-absorbed and self-suffering Leo (Connor Sullivan) is not going to get it together unless cranky but sage Grandma Vera (Jill Drexler) teaches him a few hardscrabble life lessons. Leo is kind of a tool, whining (or exploding) so much that you almost don’t feel sorry for him because his best friend was killed while the two were bicycling across America, or because his nervous girlfriend Bec (Michelle Marie Trester) has dumped him. But when he crashes at his kin’s NYC flat, her no-B.S grandparenting begins to humanize him.
            For a 90-minute one-act play, the narrative is over-packed (Vera was a “Commie”! Leo kissed his sister!), but 4000 Miles, directed at ion by Claudio Raygoza, is absorbing and except for one scene that’s played out in the dark with Leo sobbing to Grandma, not soapy. Drexler is excellent, rising above her Sofia Petrillo (from “Golden Girls”) wig and a hearing aid that wouldn’t stay in, Yumi Roussin is a crackup as a party girl in platforms whom Leo wants to bed, and the cozy apartment set is as meticulous as you’ll ever see at ion. 

​Alan, Veronica, Michael and Annette are definitely not nice people, and that’s what makes Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage a perennial theater favorite. New Village Arts’ production directed by Jessica Bird features a delightfully feisty cast. Manny Fernandes and Kristianne Kurner are Alan and Annette Raleigh, whose son hit with a stick (thereby paving the way for all the “carnage” to come) the son of Michael and Veronica Novak, exquisitely portrayed by Jeffrey Keith Jones and Melissa Fernandes.
            The pace at NVA drags a little in the first 15 minutes or so of this 75-minute black comedy, but once all civility is forsaken and sheer hell is unleashed, God of Carnage, as it always does, finds its nasty-spirited stride. Melissa Fernandes’ lecturing but ignitable Veronica is ever at the forefront of the fracases, whether they’re between the two couples or between the husbands and wives. Carnage’s infamous projectile vomiting moment, which not even the luminous Kate Winslet in the 2011 film adapation could prevent from turning your stomach. is rather mild in this production. It still gets horrified laughs, though, as does the hapless “cleanup.” Now that’s entertainment.
            

​Bill Cain’s 2009 play Equivocation is an inspired but exhausting mash-up of Shakespeare and 17th-century British history. Its premise, that The Bard himself has been commissioned to write a propaganda play based on King James I’s account of the Gunpowder Plot, raises possibilities for substantive political and historical discourse. But Equivocation, being given its regional premiere at Lamb’s Players Theatre under the direction of Deborah Gilmour Smyth, staggers under the heft of Cain’s lengthy script, jammed as it is with subtext and examinations of truths, parsing of language and a relentlessness to be both clever and deep.
            That being said, Equivocation’s comedy and its parodic nods to the body politic of the future play out well. Have the question of compromise or the blurring of truth ever been more relevant than in these inscrutable times we live in? With these sometimes-surprising allusions come occasions for audience laughter, though on opening night in Coronado more than a few in attendance didn’t seem to be “getting it,” as they say. The narrative’s dissection of conscience and betrayal, on the other hand, turns positively academic, deadening what jesting or stage antics preceded it. Equivocation perhaps tries to be two plays in one – always a chancy proposition.
            As for the ensemble, Robert Smyth (as “Shagspear”) has all the gravity and mindful elocution to transcend the play’s structural shortcomings. Even when his character’s motivations feel mercurial, Smyth evinces the surefootedness of a desirable literary hero. He is supported in the Lamb’s production by a stalwart cast that includes an equally charismatic Paul Eggington in multiple roles, chiefly that of a martyred cleric-rebel and an ornery member of Shag’s troupe. Francis Gercke admirably handles the role of the pitiable, hunchbacked Robert Cecil, heartlessly called “beagle” by the king. And as Shag’s daughter, Judith, Catie Grady makes the most of a part that should’ve been larger.
            Figuring Equivocation’s twists and turns may give you a mild headache, but for relief there’s a soothing cello played intermittently on stage by Diana Elledge.

​A new translation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler by San Diegan Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey (Dinner with Marlene) at least figuratively speaking brings the 125-year-old play into the 21st century. The North Coast Repertory Theatre’s production directed by David Ellenstein resembles the Heddas you’ve probably seen before with their period costumes and opulent furnishings. At NCR, Marty Burnett’s set, Elisa Benzoni’s costume design and Matt Novotny’s lighting are collectively outstanding. In this iteration of Hedda Gabler, the difference is how at times Hedda (Mhari Sandoval) and those in her destructive sphere of influence sound more contemporary, and even get laughs.
            In spite of its literary pedigree, Hedda Gabler  possesses the pulsating emotions and interpersonal machinations of a cracking good daytime serial, except that everything in its four acts revolves around one central, overriding character: Hedda, a beautiful, aristocratic, larger-than-life neurotic as cold as she is willful. Moving with the easy grace of a pampered cat, Sandoval brings tremendous sex appeal to the role, even though Ibsen’s heroine only teases and poses. She’s a woman who flinches from actual physical contact. That aloofness is intended especially for her new husband Jorgen Tesman (Bruce Turk), whom she wed neither out of love nor lust. Turk does well as a stammering academic propped up in direct contrast to another man in Hedda’s life, the snidely confident Judge Brack (Ray Chambers, tall and leering).
            The arrival of always-charismatic Richard Baird as Hedda’s tortured ex-lover Eilert Lovborg in Act 2 follows a slow, talky first act. This ominous turn in Ibsen’s story, which also involves the young lovestruck (over Lovburg) Thea Elvsted (Mel House) raises the narrative stakes and inspires Hedda to do her damnedest.
            Hedda Gabler, even in this world-premiere translation, is a drawing-room kind of drama with few of its contrivances as intriguing as the portrait of complex Hedda herself. Why else do you think so many esteemed actresses of stage and screen (Ingrid Bergman, Diana Rigg, Cate Blanchett, to name three) have played her – and so many others desire to do so?

​La Jolla Playhouse’s world-premiere Hollywood, written by Joe DiPietro (Memphis), is like its namesake Tinseltown: sexy, swaggering, glamorous … and artificial. All but one of its characters – a no-B.S. stage mother terrifically played by Harriet Harris – are “types,” scarcely more profound than the suspects in “Clue.” Now it’s true that the Christopher Ashley-directed Hollywood is 50 percent a theatrical whodunit, as in who murdered ‘20s movie director William Desmond Taylor (Scott Drummond)? But the other 50 percent of the story, having to do with the conservative prig Will H. Hays’ (Patrick Kerr) efforts to moralize the movies and the movie industry at the same time, is by large measure the more interesting narrative.
            Wilson Chin’s versatile scenic design, Paul Tazewell’s stylish ‘20s costumes and nifty projection design by Tara Knight combine to give Hollywood its “movie magic,” but it’s hard to care about anyone on stage or really about who indeed done in the dead director.

​There are certain Broadway classics that, if staged sincerely, deliver time and again. Fiddler on the Roof is one of them. In the last four years on the area theater scene, Fiddler’s been presented by Moonlight Stage Productions (with North Coast Rep artistic director David Ellenstein playing Tevye) and by Lamb’s Players Theatre (with Sam Zeller in the lead role). Now Welk Resorts Theatre has gotten into the act. Its Fiddler stars a likable Rudy Martinez as Tevye, supported by Wendy Waddell, a familiar Welk face, as Golde. The only limitation on Welk’s production is the size of its stage, which appears crowded during the ensemble numbers – though this was an issue in the Lamb’s staging too. But Kathy Brombacher’s direction and Justin Gray’s musical direction are deft and faithful to the essence of this theater treasure: its messages of family, tradition and perseverance wrapped in timeless songs. 

​Happened to overhear some guy during intermission of Lamb’s Players Theatre’s world-premiere Dinner with Marlene, a new play by local Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey: “I thought this was going to be more about Marlene Dietrich,” he said, sounding confused. Dinner with Marlene is about Marlene Dietrich, but it’s not a sexy Hollywood tell-all. It’s playwright Harvey’s stage realization of a story told to her by her father, who one night in October 1938 in Paris sat down to dinner with a group that included Dietrich, socialite Barbara Hutton and master violinist Fritz Kreisler. The undercurrent of the dinner chat turns intensely political, and the principled and heroic Dietrich (played vividly by Deborah Gilmour Smyth) emerges. It can be numbing watching eight people sitting at a table for two hours, but the last half-hour is your reward for doing so.
 

​Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj  at La Jolla Playhouse articulates the beautiful and the terrible, and does so in a manner that may leave you dazed. While the beautiful is mostly in your imagination, the terrible is blatant in its gruesome aftermath, making this not an evening for the weak of heart or stomach.
            The prodigious Joseph crafted the Pulitzer-nominated Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, most recently seen in San Diego at ion theatre in 2013. Guards at the Taj is a lesser work by comparison, but it does raise wrenching philosophical inquiries about life, death, duty and beauty, and it sure as hell raises hair on the back of your neck. The hypothetical premise is that two 17th-century guards (Manu Narayan and Babak Tafti) posted outside the yet-unveiled Taj Mahal are subsequently ordered to chop the hands off of all 20,000 workers who built the Taj, thereby ensuring that nothing as magnificent would ever be built afterward. There is no historical documentation marking this as fact, but the mere notion of it is shuddering and Joseph’s one-act play will consume you in its haunted characters and graphic images.
            None of this is foreshadowed in the play’s first 15 minutes or so, which finds the two guards breaking their code of silence outside the hidden Taj, riffing and ragging on each other, and inventing fantastical means of travel and transcending space. What happens after the first scene break is a horrifying 180, and frankly any attempts at quips and riffing from then on are nervous, failed distractions – for the characters and for the audience.
            The Playhouse’s associate artistic director, Jaime Castaneda, directs this production, which is uncompromising in its denouncement of tyranny, arrogance and privilege, in and out of historical context. The two guards were ordered to “kill beauty,” in the words of Babur (Tafti), a crime just as heinous as the mutilations they carried out.
            Guards at the Taj is at the very least an uncomfortable sit for theatergoers, in spite of bracing performances by both Narayan and Tafti, Thomas Ontiveros’ lighting and Cricket S. Myers’ sound design. Just remember, beauty has its flip side.