24th Street Theatre

I was thrilled to see your front-page article, "Residents Say Coliseum Area Is Blooming" (May 31), which informed readers about an area of their city, while having nothing to do with a murder or sensationalistic crime. One small correction, though. The area around USC is being refurbished so rapidly that your story envisioned a "village with a theater" someday. Well, it's already there; the 24th Street Theatre has been presenting professional theater on 24th and Hoover since the end of April.

Lithe and long-limbed, with dark, cascading hair, Sandra Tsing Loh opens "Mother on Fire," her new one-woman show at the 24th Street Theatre, with an odd, loping, lunatic dance. It's one of the calmer moments in a frenetic evening. Laid back, Loh is not. She's the human equivalent of a Tex Avery cartoon character as drawn by Edvard Munch. An established solo artist and social commentator, Loh caused a flurry last year when she was booted off the radio waves.

One way to find out what's going on in the theater is to read the reviews. Another way is to push open a theater door, walk in during a rehearsal, stand smack in the middle of the performance space and say: "Hey, what are you guys doing?" A young boy from the neighborhood chose the latter approach during a recent rehearsal of "The Importance of Being Earnest" at the 24th Street Theatre just west of Hoover Avenue near the USC campus.

SANDRA TSING LOH is one of those frantic, rocket-fueled, high-energy, iconoclastic funny women who dashes about so wildly that one can almost be convinced she is subliminal, existing in flashes barely below our level of awareness. Othello, on the other hand, is a good-natured, slow-moving, agonizing Moor who has no sense of humor at all and ends up, not making us laugh, but making us ponder his vulnerability when, duped by the evil Iago, he murders his wife.

One of the saddest measures of contemporary cultural fragmentation is the polarization of young and old into hostile camps. The extent to which the generation gap of the '60s has widened to an abyss in the '90s is startlingly apparent in London playwright Jess Walters' edgy "Cockroach, Who?," making its U.S. debut at the 24th Street Theatre. Replete with street-smart dialect and punctuated by bursts of raucous rock music in L.

* "The Cave Dwellers"--William Saroyan's warmhearted drama, with Claudette Sutherland, left, Wesley Mann, J. Steven Marcus and Katy Boyer, continues through Jan. 24 at 24th Street Theatre. * "Life Support"--A man and a woman are unexpectedly drawn together as they await word about their ill loved ones in a new play opening Friday at Actors Alley at El Portal in North Hollywood.

* Laura Comstock's Bag-Punching Dog (24th Street Theatre, 1117 W. 24th St., L.A., [323] 461-6069). Tim Sabourin, above left, and Joe Fria appear in Circle X Theatre Co.'s world-premiere musical about the early days of the film industry. "Sweeping, consummately well-realized and vastly entertaining, a technical knockout with Broadway potential" (F. Kathleen Foley). Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Sept. 15. $20; Sunday matinees, pay what you can.

It's been a Wilde theatrical season. The latest in a rash of recent productions of "The Importance of Being Earnest" can be found in the inaugural season at the 24th Street Theatre (in repertory with "The Cave Dwellers"). This particular incarnation of Wilde's overly produced classic is distinctive primarily in that it features an all-African American cast--an innovation oddly incidental to the overall production, which carefully avoids any emphasis whatsoever on the color of the performers.

The 24th Street Theatre's first production is both promising and disappointing. "The Music of Magdalena Bay" is poorly written, lacking both credibility and tension. Yet as a multimedia event, there are glimmers of inspiration that the Glorious Repertory Theatre Company should continue to nurture. The time is 1999 and an ambitious Los Angeles television anchorwoman, Beth Anderson (Gay Storm), feels threatened by the emerging Latino population.

"The Nightingale and the Rose," at the 24th Street Theatre, uses the Oscar Wilde fable of sacrificial love as a leaping-off point for a period piece set on a riverboat in Prohibition New Orleans. Thanks to Seanne Farmer's set, Robert Velasquez's costumes, Ruth Judkowitz's sound design and Kathi O'Donohue's wonderfully evocative lighting, the production has a fervid Pirates of the Caribbean ambience that is great fun.

Kate Crackernuts: Warning -- this production might give you a buzz. I don't mean the Ecstasy high of its club-kid chorus, but something closer to an actual buzzing in your ears -- from John Zalewski's thumping, trickling sound design, to the strange, dense, brilliant wordplay of writer Sheila Callaghan, to the direction of Jessica Kubzansky.

With the characteristic assurance seen in such previous efforts as the acclaimed "Orson's Shadow," director Matt Shakman smooths the way for Adam Stein's turbulent new play "Angry" at the Black Dahlia Theatre. The action -- set, at a best guess, in the 1980s -- takes place in an idyllic suburban neighborhood, complete with a celestial backdrop of blue skies in Andrea Finn's nicely wry scenic design.

A rock star and his biggest fan -- a nerdy 12-year-old -- learn something about the seductive and fleeting power of fame and the need for a strong sense of self in "The Legend of Alex," an entertaining, muscular new musical from the Mark Taper Forum's P.L.A.Y. (Performing for Los Angeles Youth) company.

* Laura Comstock's Bag-Punching Dog (24th Street Theatre, 1117 W. 24th St., L.A., [323] 461-6069). Tim Sabourin, above left, and Joe Fria appear in Circle X Theatre Co.'s world-premiere musical about the early days of the film industry. "Sweeping, consummately well-realized and vastly entertaining, a technical knockout with Broadway potential" (F. Kathleen Foley). Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Sept. 15. $20; Sunday matinees, pay what you can.

The latest offering from the Circle X Theatre Company, "Laura Comstock's Bag-Punching Dog," a world-premiere musical now at the 24th Street Theatre, is the ground-floor production of what could well be a theatrical event. Despite a shaky vocal performance or two and a few rough patches in thematic cohesion, this consummately well-realized entertainment is a technical knockout with Broadway potential.

Kate Crackernuts: Warning -- this production might give you a buzz. I don't mean the Ecstasy high of its club-kid chorus, but something closer to an actual buzzing in your ears -- from John Zalewski's thumping, trickling sound design, to the strange, dense, brilliant wordplay of writer Sheila Callaghan, to the direction of Jessica Kubzansky.

Elroyce D. Jones' new drama, "A Thimble of Smoke," is about a washerwoman in Mississippi during Jim Crow days who hopes her youngest daughter will get an education and a better life. This production at the 24th Street Theatre shows some promise, but Jones has crammed in too many story lines and characters to fully develop in 90 minutes. Mark Worthington's set stirs up an atmosphere of dust and dirt-poorness. A haze hangs over the ramshackle house as the audience enters.

Rambling, hard to follow and torn by jagged time lapses and shifts of tone, "The Winter's Tale" is notoriously difficult to pull off under any circumstances. Tackling it with an all-female cast is a more daunting challenge than the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company has faced with previous stagings of the Bard's better-known works.

The traditional Japanese Children's Day celebration comes to Little Tokyo in the form of sports and art activities for kids and their families. Family Fun Fest kicks off early Saturday morning when kids ages 4-12 fill the streets during a mini-marathon. Participants will be given a pancake breakfast, a goodie bag and T-shirt. Later in the day, children will have the opportunity to learn basketball skills from local college athletes and make Japanese art projects.