Jungmadel: Hitler's Little Girls

At first lights-up, the five young teenage girls standing on a street corner as their idol ceremoniously rides by could be of any era, waiting for a glimpse of Elvis or the Beatles or the current crop of momentarily charismatic twinkies with names like Jonas or Bieber. Instead, turning up the creepy level to critical, it's Germany in 1940, and these sweet-faced obsessed fans are getting hot and bothered anticipating the passing presence of their beloved fuehrer, one Adolf Hitler. It's a powerful image with which to begin Laurel Long's play, a quick but potent study of the consequences of the kind of insidious propaganda that through time has helped to destroy our societies and has revealed mankind to be the most easily manipulated species on the planet, from ancient Rome to the Salem witch trials to the Tea Partiers of today.

Long began searching Google and Wikipedia for interesting stories about young girls to showcase the talents of her youthful all-female Dollface Ensemble—which she founded, her program notes explain, to "empower them to eventually create their own opportunities." Stumbling across tales of the Hitler Youth, Long found that the Nazis' public programming of these youngsters struck a nerve because of the "fierce and relentless partisan rhetoric…of late." For a no-nonsense but also not terribly nuanced 70-ish minutes, the audience watches as the passion and loyalty of this quartet of indoctrinated kids turns deadly.

Directed by Long and featuring a fine performance by Maarten Comelis as the violently opposed brother of one of the girls, the ensemble of Gracie Greer, Olivia Kamalski, Melissa Lozano, Mizuki Sako, and Sullivan Long is strong and disturbingly able to find the horror in these roles, although what's needed is someone to pull them together into one uniform performance approach. Some of these promising fledglings, all with discernible futures in the profession if they choose to continue their journeys, need to tone down their oratorical style to accommodate a 99-seat theater, while others, surely with more film than stage experience, must learn to speak up and enunciate more clearly. Voice training is an easy fix for young actors, and these Dollfaces could benefit from a brief turn in that direction.

Presented by Dollface Ensemble at the Arena Stage at Theatre of Arts, 1625 N. Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood. Sept. 19-Oct. 24. Sun., 3 p.m. (323) 960-7724. www.plays411.com/jungmadel.