Fountain Theatre

Fear, loathing, love, anger, joy, whimsy, strength, tenderness. The gamut of human emotions was on display Saturday when the Fountain Theatre presented its 10th annual Festival of Solos and Duets, with 11 choreographers offering varying slice-of-life dances in the cozy space. For sheer intensity, Diana MacNeil's "Lacrymosa," performed by the choreographer and Sean Greene, proved a heart-wrenching study of hope and doom.

The word "decline" has cast a dark shadow over more than just America's prosperity. The theater has been in a downward slope since the recession, and only those with their head in the sand could overlook the plummeting number of theatrical offerings, the fall off in institutional ambition, the degeneration of book musicals and the eroded ability of the art form to mirror its own contemporary moment. Was there a drama as revealing of the zeitgeist as the film "The Social Network" or as expansively ruminative about what led us to this current hole as Jonathan Franzen's novel "Freedom"?

The joy of sex, the cold indifference of medical specialists, the anguish of a failed attempt at parenthood--these are the emotions that linger from David Rudkin's beautiful play "Ashes." Uncannily adept at mining awful meaning from the everyday, Rudkin excels at the kind of precise, deeply felt writing that can make one behold the world in a fresh, if not always happy, way.

For Athol Fugard , the playwright's pilgrimage can be a long, tortuous slog. But the trek is less daunting and more companionable if that road happens to pass through L.A.'s Fountain Theatre . Since 2000, when the intimate Hollywood playhouse staged the Los Angeles premiere of Fugard's "The Road to Mecca," the 78-year-old South African playwright has regarded the Fountain as something of an artistic home away from home. It will be again starting Saturday, when the Fountain will host the U.S. premiere of Fugard's latest work, "The Train Driver," a succinct, one-act, two-character drama that deals with Fugard's pivotal theme of the last two decades: South Africa's quest to shake off the ghosts of apartheid's dehumanizing legacy.

L ate in the afternoon on bullfight days, the sun slants menacingly against the irregular geometry of Andalusian villages. The air is charged with excitement, and in the distance, a flamenco guitar can be heard, softly at first . Soon, the music is louder and raspier and cruel . . . . Can't make it to southern Spain for flamenco? On weekends, there's "Flamenco at the Fountain"--that's the Fountain Theatre, a small Equity theater in Hollywood.

"Flamenco is a dance form you can do into your old age," performer-choreographer Roberto Amaral maintains. "It's not like ballet, which has a high level of technical involvement. Flamenco is more than technique: It's heart, soul and emotion. It's a way of life." It's also very popular. January's Sunday afternoon flamenco series at the Fountain Theatre "was an enormous success," said Deborah Lawlor, the theater's artistic producing director. "We had to turn away 300 people."

The Fountain Theatre's production of "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," the third in the late August Wilson's 10-play, decade-by-decade cycle about the black experience in the 20th century, resonates as a fitting memorial to a genius whose distinctive voice was stilled too soon. "Turner" is set in Pittsburgh, as are all the plays in the cycle with the exception of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," which is set in Chicago.

The band has been playing on for a quarter of a century, and "The Boys in the Band" have come a long way. Or have they? When Mart Crowley's landmark play about homosexuals opened off-Broadway on April 14, 1968, it caused more than a stir. And in more ways than one. It was the first play on the subject to become a hit with gay and straight audiences. It was the year of "coming out," just before the Stonewall riot outside a Greenwich Village bar. The play established a few careers.

"Tender Is the Night," F. Scott Fitzgerald's finest and most serious novel, which was a flop when it was published in the middle of the Great Depression, has been adapted to the stage for the first time in the face of open-mouthed wonder. Fitzgerald fans, academics and those who remember the disappointing 1962 movie version are questioning the audacity of bringing this American masterpiece onto a stage at all.

A small, respected East Hollywood theater was reeling Sunday following the slaying of one of its longtime directors. Bennett Bradley, 59, was found stabbed to death about 5:50 p.m. Saturday in his Mid-Wilshire-area apartment, according to Los Angeles police. Detectives believe the apartment was the target of a robbery but said they had few leads. "At this point, we have very little to go on," said Officer Karen Rayner. "We are asking for the public's help." Bradley had worked at the Fountain Theatre for 16 years and had become its public face, producing director Simon Levy said Sunday night.

Websites of some of the theaters and theater companies mentioned in the conversation. The Antaeus Company , http://www.antaeus.org Black Dahlia , http://www.thedahlia.com The Blank Theatre Company , http://www.theblank.com Circle X Theatre Co. , http://www.circlextheatre.org Circus Theatricals , http://www.circustheatricals.com City Garage , http://www.citygarage.org Critical Mass Performance Group , http://www.

Over dinner at the Newsroom Café recently, Times theater critic Charles McNulty and LA Weekly theater critic Steven Leigh Morris (current official title: critic at large) began a dialogue on the state of the city's smaller theater scene — the 99-seat-or-fewer venues that percolate with a relentlessness that not even Starbucks can rival. McNulty recently weighed in on the leadership challenges confronting the larger nonprofit venues, and this give-and-take on L.A.'s network of smaller theater, which the critics subsequently pursued over e-mail, seemed worthy of a larger forum.

A small, respected East Hollywood theater was reeling Sunday following the slaying of one of its longtime directors. Bennett Bradley, 59, was found stabbed to death about 5:50 p.m. Saturday in his Mid-Wilshire-area apartment, according to Los Angeles police. Detectives believe the apartment was the target of a robbery but said they had few leads. "At this point, we have very little to go on," said Officer Karen Rayner. "We are asking for the public's help." Bradley had worked at the Fountain Theatre for 16 years and had become its public face, producing director Simon Levy said Sunday night.

We're all haunted by our pasts. But in Conor McPherson's "Shining City," now receiving its Los Angeles premiere at the Fountain Theatre, the emotional baggage is literally paranormal. John (Morlan Higgins), a middle-aged Dublin businessman, recently lost his estranged wife in a grisly automobile accident. But she has returned from the dead, in visits so uncanny John can't even set foot in their house. Is she really there? Or is John going mad from the guilt of having treated her so badly when she was still alive?

South African playwright Athol Fugard has long been hailed as one of the world's most important living playwrights. The West Coast premiere of "Coming Home" at the Fountain Theatre showcases his artistry in an optimum production. Laura Fine Hawkes' meticulous set, a one-room hut in a remote South African village, plants us firmly in another world, where subsistence is a triumph of will. It is here that Veronica Jonkers (heartbreakingly matter-of-fact Deidrie Henry), a road-weary refugee from a hard life in Cape Town, has returned with her little boy, Mannetjie (Timothy Taylor)

For too long, a prejudice against intimacy has distorted some of the greatest dance idioms that ever expressed the soul of a culture. We seem to value dance only when it looks imposing, theatrical, with large casts spread across our biggest stages. When a performance represents a soloist's deep, subtle and almost private response to music, a text or personal demons, we think of it as a lesser experience.

* After the Fall (Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., L.A., [323] 663-1525). Tracy Middendorf, above, stars as the Monroe-esque tragic heroine in Arthur Miller's 1964 memory play dissecting the limits of personal integrity. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends March 31. $24.

* "Summer and Smoke"--Tracy Middendorf, above, is the shy Miss Alma and Cameron Dye is the passionate Dr. John Buchanan in the Tennessee Williams drama at the Fountain Theatre. * "It All Depends on You"--Gary Davis' play about a terminally ill man at a crossroads, a mental patient who thinks he's Frank Sinatra, and a morphine addict opens tonight at P.A.C. Theatre.

Fear, loathing, love, anger, joy, whimsy, strength, tenderness. The gamut of human emotions was on display Saturday when the Fountain Theatre presented its 10th annual Festival of Solos and Duets, with 11 choreographers offering varying slice-of-life dances in the cozy space. For sheer intensity, Diana MacNeil's "Lacrymosa," performed by the choreographer and Sean Greene, proved a heart-wrenching study of hope and doom.

The Fountain Theatre's production of "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," the third in the late August Wilson's 10-play, decade-by-decade cycle about the black experience in the 20th century, resonates as a fitting memorial to a genius whose distinctive voice was stilled too soon. "Turner" is set in Pittsburgh, as are all the plays in the cycle with the exception of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," which is set in Chicago.