It would be hard to find two more delightful and captivating commentaries on the dance between the sexes, both plays perfectly sized for their wit to work without cloying. The shared premise of these one-acts, featuring one couple apiece, is that the sexes will never know each other much better than they do at first meeting, which might as well suffice for mating. But Noël Coward's 1922 Mild Oats shows instinct alternately pushed and prodded, crimped and cramped by convention, while G.B. Shaw's 1934 comedic gem, Village Wooing, a mini Man and Superman, finds cosmic harmony among social convention, a primitive life force, and the power of the extraordinary personality to use one to serve the other. Both stagings are extremely gratifying.
In Mild Oats, two singular young souls, He and She (Michael Edwards, Rebecca Marcotte), respectively decide to pick and be picked up, but the torture they endure from their newly emboldened actions is hilariously liberating to the audience. (How times have changed!) Marcotte adroitly plays the "modern egalitarian woman," whose convictions outstrip her courage, with a touch of underlying terror only partly abated by Edwards' amusingly realized timid and constipated would-be masher, who is too fearful to be more than nice (thank heaven for them both). Unlike in most Coward, the wit is more in the situation than in the dialogue. Happily, then, Mark Bennington's precise direction keeps the droll, comic timing finely focused throughout, from fidgets to pratfalls, steering it toward the inevitable marriage proposal designed to quell both characters' turmoil from their terrible shyness by clutching at the conventional heterosexual solution, a sly swipe from Coward.
Wooing casts a sexually energized Sarah Fleming as the self-possessed Alpha gently stalking the passive, introverted Zed (Alex Wells), a tourist-guidebook writer whom she meets by winning an ocean-cruise contest, then converts to becoming first her boss and finally her husband (whom she'll dominate). Wells plays his hand with the right portion of futile resistance yielding to wry resignation in the face of a force of nature—first struggling against the tide and then succumbing to its rhythms—a performance laced with technical skill and intelligence, from peeved looks to hunched shoulders to an eventual joyous final leap. (His few opening-night lapses of articulation aren't likely to recur.) But the evening belongs to Fleming, who infuses Alpha with glowing energy and irresistible determination. Her predatory zeal, flexed bosom, and self-satisfied smile leave no doubt that she shall prevail, but a pleasant surprise is the transformation she makes in Zed.
Effective uncredited costuming, Patrick Joseph's simple but imaginative set designs (including drawing-room treats of faux-Regency desk/bureau and a ship's deck with lounge chairs), and Kenny's unobtrusive foghorns and lapping waves add flavor to these two wonderfully delicious confections.
"Village Wooing" and "Mild Oats," presented by the Classic Theater Lab at Glaxa Studios, 3707 Sunset Blvd., Silverlake. Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m. Mar. 1-17. $10. (323) 644-9745.