THEATER PREVIEW:

Most of playwright Richard Greenberg’s projects at South Coast Repertory have made audiences care about the fate of Greenberg’s protagonists.

However, with “The Injured Party,” his latest SCR offering, such is not the case. We’re looking at an avaricious clod and his unfaithful girlfriend, the two leading characters. Empathy has been lost.

This is the primary reason why the project, replete with pregnant pauses under the direction of Trip Cullman, never really catches hold. It’s a comedy, yet two characters die, one in a plot twist right out of left field.

If Tom speaks for Tennessee Williams in “The Glass Menagerie,” then surely Seth is the voice of playwright Greenberg in “Party.” As enthusiastically interpreted by Reg Rogers, he opens the play with an extended monologue which carries the essential message of “Grandma’s rich and I’m living hand-to-mouth. I want my share.” This overbearing attitude is the show’s centerpiece.

Greenberg’s play basically is an exercise in Seth’s attempts to worm some cash from his kindly but manipulating elderly grandmother, played by Cynthia Harris.

The other characters are an eclectic lot — Seth’s goy girlfriend Becca (Marin Ireland), his cousin (or aunt, Greenberg is unclear on that score) Bettina, supposedly widowed and a kleptomaniac (Caroline Lagerfelt) and a fey family friend (T. Scott Cunningham) who’s practically perfect, and a crashing bore.

Rogers enacts his unlikable character-narrator with a frustration mixed with gusto that prevents the play from achieving the sort of creative suicide it might attain with a lesser actor.

Harris gradually erases the “age problem” with a potent performance, culminating in her request for Seth to change his last name to more reflect his Hebrew heritage. Ireland projects a vapid character, a young actress searching for motherhood and stability, yet prone to romantic distractions on the road.

Lagerfelt does her utmost to humanize her light-fingered eccentric, but she remains unceremoniously discarded in the play’s unnecessary afterthought sequence.

“The Injured Party” is played out in the New York City of 2005, when Christo’s fabric-paneled project “The Gates” was displayed for 16 days in Central Park. This is more a frame of reference than a crucial plot point, an artwork dedicated by its creators to “the quality of love and tenderness that we human beings have for what does not last.”

Like “The Gates,” Greenberg’s “The Injured Party” also is deficient in staying power, however unintentionally. It is lacking the compelling visceral attitude of the playwright’s previous works and ultimately inaccessible.

WHAT: “The Injured Party”

WHERE: South Coast Repertory, Julianne Argyros Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.

WHEN: 7:45 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 7:45 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays until May 11

COST: $28 - $62

CALL: (714) 708-5555

Colleges taking shots at Shakespeare this weekend

“The play’s the thing,” Shakespeare wrote in “Hamlet,” and two local collegiate performing groups are celebrating the Bard of Avon this weekend with their particular spin on his 400-year-old works.

Tonight, OCC and UCI open separate Shakespearean productions — “Much Ado About Nothing” at OCC and “Measure for Measure” at UCI. “Much Ado” will be on stage for three weekends, “Measure” for two.

At OCC, director Alex Golson is mounting a fast-paced version of Shakespeare’s famous battle of the sexes, presenting it as a play within a play that tells the story of a small group of 19th-century amateur actors struggling to put on a “cultural edifying event.”

Because of the lack of interested men (a condition that often prevails today), many of the usual male roles are played by young women in fake beards and mustaches.

Golson has trimmed the script to a running time of 90 minutes. His cast includes Veronica Veters, A.J. Baudish, Samantha Wellen, Melissa Maurizi, Christopher Vu, Ashley Baudish, Shawn Greenfield, Cillon Hilse, Alyse Russell, Tiffany Ngyuen and faculty member David Scaglione.

“Much Ado About Nothing” will be presented at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays in the OCC Drama Lab Theater, with a 2:30 p.m. closing performance scheduled for Sunday, May 18. Call the college at (714) 432-5880 for ticket information.

Meanwhile, tonight also is opening night at UCI, where Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” opens a two-weekend engagement under the direction of Philip Thompson. He’s setting the tale of intrigue, corruption and hypocrisy in modern-day corporate America.

In Shakespeare’s original concept, the Duke of Vienna abandons his city and places his puritanical deputy Angelo in charge — with Angelo delivering an uncompromising application of justice in a city rife with prostitution and sexual excess.

“You can’t throw a rock in the U.S. Senate without hitting a hyprocrite — more specifically a sexual hypocrite,” Thompson comments.

“I believe this is one of the central illnesses of American culture — the inability to reconcile our longs with our shame, our bodies with our souls,” he notes. “This furious energy is the driving force in this play.”

“Measure for Measure” will be staged at 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays at 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays through May 10 in UCI’s Studio Theater. Ticket reservations are being taken at (949) 824-2787.

Turning back to OCC, while still on the subject of Shakespeare, the college will hold auditions at 6 p.m. May 12 and 7 p.m. May 13 for an outdoor production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Golson also is directing this Shakespearean comedy and notes that more than 20 roles are available for men and women of all ages.

Performances will be given in OCC’s Fine Arts Amphitheater from June 27 through July 6 and admission will be free.

TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews appear Thursdays.