Snake in the Grass

Matrix Theatre
7657 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood
Thursday-Saturday 8 p.m., Sunday 3 p.m.
Through May 4
Tickets: $25-30
www.salemktheatreco.org

Perennially popular British playwright Alan Ayckbourn is best known for his hilarious farces, usually sparked by trenchant social satire and intricate plotting. This 2002 comedy-thriller invites us to unravel a cleverly complex storyline, in which things aren’t quite as they seem on the surface. Though the play ultimately loses a bit of steam, becoming a tad predictable toward the end, director Mark Rosenblatt and his sturdy ensemble ensure a jolly good time.

The setting is the garden of a run-down estate in London. After a 30-year absence, middle-aged divorcee Annabel (Pamela Salem) returns to the family home to claim her share of the inheritance left by her recently deceased father. While awaiting the arrival of her younger sibling, Miriam (Claire Jacobs), Annabel has a surprise visitor. Alice (Nicola Bertram) is the nurse who helped Miriam care for the ailing patriarch, until Miriam fired her for incompetence. Alice offers evidence that Miriam murdered the cantankerous old coot, and she attempts to blackmail the sisters for a huge sum, threatening to go to the police with this revelation. After Miriam returns, another murder takes place, and the two siblings scramble to hide the evidence.

Though Aycbourn’s potboiler is primarily a guilty-pleasure lark, it provides three scintillating roles for mature character actresses. In scenes in which the sisters reminiscent about their troubled and lonely pasts, there’s a hint of more substance to the story, but even here, the deck is stacked with red herrings for subsequent payoff. Sort of a low-key British variation on What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, this is a tale of sibling rivalry gone amuck. To add to the merry brew, ghostly goings-on enter the fray before the final fadeout.

Salem is empathetic playing a character who initially seems priggish and insufferable, becoming deliciously vulnerable as the story progresses. It’s great fun to see her establish a crisp British reserve that begins to crumble as the plot thickens. Jacobs is a delightfully demented oddball. We know from the outset there’s something cooking in that fiendish brain; we just don’t know what it is. And in the more subdued role of the opportunistic domestic worker, Bertram offers exemplary support. Laura Fine Hawke’s atmospheric set, Leigh Allen’s ambient lighting and Eric Snodgrass’ creepy sound effects add to the spirited fun.
—Les Spindle

Tallgrass Gothic

Sacred Fools Theater
660 N. Heliotrope Dr., Hollywood
Tuesday-Wednesday 8 p.m.
Through May 7
Tickets: $10
www.sacredfools.org

Despite its apparent aim to be a sultry mix of romantic tragedy and occult fantasy, Melanie Marnich’s meandering one-act play, which premiered at the Humana Festival in Louisville, Ky., in 2004, is more about self-conscious atmospherics than lucid storytelling. During the first several minutes, there is so little dialogue and so much erotic kissing and rolling around on the floor between a young couple, one begins to wonder if what’s to follow is an evening of soft porn. The lovemaking gradually ends, replaced by extremely quiet and restrained line deliveries. Director Jaime L.. Robledo seems to equate low-key emoting and nearly inaudible speaking with a sort of laid-back, bucolic realism, but this approach primarily engenders the feeling that there’s not much happening. Though the volume gradually increases from time to time, and discernible plot elements eventually kick in, the piece is never very involving.

Loosely inspired by the 17th-century British tragedy The Changeling, this tale of adultery, murder and retribution includes some supernatural elements. Set in an unspecified time period in the rural Midwest, the story introduces us to young Laura (Carrie Wiita), who has commenced an extramarital affair with the local stud, Daniel (RJ DeBard). She has completely tuned out from her brutish and domineering husband, Tin (Gregory Sims), continually resisting his romantic advances, yet she’s reluctant to leave him. When a salacious opportunist, Filene (Kevin Meoak), enters the scene, Laurie enlists him to resolve her miserable domestic situation through grisly means, offering the hint that there will be non-monetary compensations for his efforts. Things go awry from there, leading to a bloody and unpleasant series of events. This Great Plains community then begins to resemble Wisteria Lane, by way of Sleepy Hollow.

The actors appear to be committed to the project, but the overall effort seems misguided. Listless where it should be provocative, tedious where it ought to be frightening, and so slow-paced that paying attention becomes a challenge, it’s hard to pinpoint whether the bigger fault is with the circuitous material or the uninspired interpretation. Any way you slice it, the grass isn’t very green in this lumbering portrait of hell in the heartland.
—L.S.