The fragile, damaged, quirky Southern characters in Tennessee Williams' plays are ripe for parody, especially because the successful production of his work requires a carefully calibrating hand. This sendup could be accurately re-titled "Glass Streetcar Menagerie on a Hot Tin Roof," as it combines characters and story lines from Williams' three best-known plays. Here, narrator-attorney Mitch O'Connor (Kenn Johnson) visits his client Big Daddy Dubois (Quincy Miller), who is dying of a spastic colon. Big Daddy's daughter Blanche Kowalski (Catherine Cronin) is as crazy as a jaybird, and her husband, Stanley (Joe Dallo), is having an affair with Maggie "the Cat" (Renee Scott), who parades around in a never-ending variety of slips. Laura (Stephanie Strand) is haunted by her love of Mitch and her collection of glass figurines that in reality are ice cubes.
Writers Maureen Morley and Tim Willmorth have a stream of jokes about sweating; but with references to Maalox juleps and a hairdo that's "a replica of the aspic at the Miss Palmetto Contest," there's much more laughing than complaining to be done. Dallo is especially fun as the brutish, selfish Stanley, who, on a fire escape, muses on the days he had more passion for Blanche: "She'd give me a hickey for every moth I could catch and eat." This comedic confection is uniformly well-acted, and director Andrew Crusse keeps the hilarity bubbling along in the steamy, rundown environs of a plantation house. The cast is committed to the lunacy herein, making the character of Brick, played by a dummy, almost as engaging as this madcap menagerie.
Presented by the Ark Theatre at the Hayworth Theatre, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Dec. 4–Jan. 30. Thu.–Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (323) 969-1707. www.arktheatre.org.