LA Review: 'Dutchman'

Few 20th-century one-acts carry the structural acuity and timeless force of “Dutchman,” Amiri Baraka’s corrosive 1964 two-hander, written under the name LeRoi Jones and a classic of its kind. Fewer still, short form or long, have quite so specifically trenchant and timely an aspect for the current day. That topical punch drives the acceptably directed, effectively appointed revival at ArtWorks Theater past an unavoidable obstacle, which we’ll return to presently.

The play takes place on a New York subway car, which set designer Burris Jackes shrewdly realizes with the same junction of representation and abstraction that the coruscating script displays. The deceptively skewed scenario observes Clay (Deforrest Taylor), a business-suited black man, and Lula (Iva Stelmak), an enigmatic young white woman who scopes him out before boarding. The ensuing pas de deux, which echoes references as diverse as the Book of Genesis and Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman,” pulls racial, gender, and cultural shibboleths into bas relief, only to upend and reverse them, with a final twist of the knife that remains shocking and haunting.

Certainly director April Daisy White, who generally keeps the hairpin turns coming, understands the central conundrum, aiming for an ambience both casual and off-kilter. Besides Jackes, the designers go for 99-seat broke. Kathi O’Donohue’s lighting, all sudden flashes of red and subtle opening of the playing-area aperture, is another of her brilliant jobs, and David B. Marling’s sound, which incorporates speakers beneath our seats that make us rattle along with the actors, may be his best yet.

Which brings us to the aforementioned obstacle: the two performers, on paper ideally cast, in action oddly frustrating. Stelmak is a stunner and moves through Lula’s ever-changing motives with an outsized attack, whereas the quietly staunch Taylor takes an opposite approach, exactly right. However, at the reviewed performance, far too many beats and transitions were visibly engineered, with the requisite tension registering but fleetingly.

Still, both actors demonstrate flashes of raw, nuanced energy, Sterniak most vivid when Lula takes to the aisles, Taylor coming fully alive for Clay’s climactic harangue. Their dutiful but faintly collegiate approach doesn’t destroy “Dutchman” and hopefully will grow more spontaneous and unpredictable as the run progresses. Still, this particular subway stop doesn’t exactly shatter the spectator.

Presented by C.P. Productions at ArtWorks Theater, 6569 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A. May 3–26. Thu.–Sat., 8 p.m. (800) 838-3006, (323) 929-2699, www.brownpapertickets.com, or www.dutchmantheplay.com.