L.A., Through the Glare

Welcome to the thousand natural shocks Los Angeles is heir to--riots, fires, earthquakes, salacious television producers with hair plugs. In “The Street of the Sun,” a new play by Jose Rivera, the city is chief protagonist among many characters, realistic and fantastic. Having its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum as the second offering of the summer’s New Theatre for Now series, the play is a hodgepodge that suffers more from uneven writing than from its funky mix of styles.

Switching from high satire to whimsical fantasy to clunky realism complete with earnest monologues, Rivera tells the story of a day in the life of Jorge Cienfuegos (an appealing John Ortiz), a schoolteacher from New York trying to hit the big money in Los Angeles. Jorge’s qualms about selling out are matched only by his desire to sell out big. Leaving his wife pining for New York in their Studio City bed, Jorge begins his quest in the shining city and takes a meeting. His friend, a once important Cuban playwright now turned manic Hollywood idea merchant (Bertila Damas), has secured him an airing at Cyclops Films, the coolest studio in town and producer of idiotic sitcoms that exploit the reigning stereotypes of the day. Rivera has changed the names and some of the details to more severely punish the guilty.

Jorge naively believes he can sell a fable from his childhood about a girl who gets impregnated by the sun god. Actually, it’s a hot idea, since the hippest new celebrity to buy Bel-Air real estate is Apollo--yes, the Greek god.

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Nevertheless, the outrageously sexist, racist moguls (played splendidly by Victor Raider-Wexler and Robert Dorfman) at Cyclops Films reject Jorge’s idea without really hearing it. It’s characteristic of the play that just as this risky scene culminates, Jorge throws a wet rag on the log by delivering a lecture to the producers about what they really should be showing on television.

The high concept, high comedy of the Cyclops scene contrasts strangely with some of Rivera’s more naturalistic writing, the best of which is delivered by an African American woman (Dawnn Lewis) whom Jorge meets at the Griffith Park Observatory. Just one of many people who feel compelled to talk to Jorge, she gives him her blistering assessment of L.A.-style racism while recounting her heart-rending worries about her son. One of the play’s most affecting moments, it is nevertheless in need of pruning.

Other monologues, particularly a long, eleventh hour pamphlet delivered by Jorge’s wife, Therese (Catherine Dent), are much less effective. A sudden convert to the city’s charms, Therese tries to talk her depressed husband into loving the city. She comes up with a list of ethnically and geographically diverse experiences that sounds like a brochure from the chamber of commerce.

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Throughout the play, one can’t help but notice that Jorge is being followed by a lumbering, hulking, dust-covered creature (the amazing looking Herschel Sparber), who is obviously a symbol for something--perhaps the unwritten masterpiece inside that Jorge has been neglecting, perhaps the working-class resentment of a forthcoming crisis of conscience. When it is finally revealed, the hulk’s actual identity is a letdown and a waste of visual opportunity.

Director David Esbjornson stages the comedic sections (among Rivera’s funniest writing) with energy and a good eye. But he seems to give up on the staid sections, which are allowed to just sink.

As a fed-up Apollo, Dorfman comes to the rescue of one such moment by expertly delivering a hilarious rant--even a god can realize the futility of trying to find immortality in Los Angeles. Other standouts in the cast include Javi Mulero and Vanessa Marquez in a variety of roles.

People on the street are drawn to Jorge; they tell him stories. But he can’t see that he has all the stories he needs because he’s blinded by the riches offered in this mythical city. Jorge forgets that the only way a writer can really own a story is by writing it so well that he makes it his own.

Rivera balances the tale of Jorge with the tales being told and lived all around him. His balancing of those two stories at times threatens to be really touching. But Rivera also interweaves imaginative writing with dull and obvious passages, and that balance works far less well. He sincerely tries to figure out his relationship to this city, but he can’t resist lecturing to it.

And that impedes his laudable desire to render Los Angeles in a blazing light.

* “The Street of the Sun,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends June 8. $29-$37. (213) 628-2772. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

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“The Street of the Sun”

With: Bertila Damas, Catherine Dent, Robert Dorfman, Dawnn Lewis, Vanessa Marquez, Jeanne Mori, Javi Mulero, John Ortiz, Victor Raider-Wexler, Herschel Sparber

A Mark Taper Forum production. By Jose Rivera. Directed by David Esbjornson. Sets Christopher Barreca. Costumes Elizabeth Hope Clancy. Lights Geoff Korf. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Composer Dave Ossmann. Wigs and hair Carol F. Doran. Fight director Randy Kovitz. Production stage manager Don Hill.