‘Happiness’ at Celebration / ‘Landmarks’ at Shepard; ‘Some Men Need Help’ in Beverly Hills / ‘Fear’ at Alley

In 1966, a gay bar in Silver Lake called The Black Cat was raided by baton-wielding police. A protest rally followed. Suddenly gays were parading in the streets. Cultural historians may debate this, but that attack ushered in the public dawn of gay and lesbian activism in Los Angeles.

“Pursuit of Happiness” at the Celebration Theatre opens with a similar police attack in a fictional retreat called the Pink Parrot Bar, quickly establishing the docudrama framework that informs this well-acted production focusing on 20 years of local gay and lesbian life.

Director and co-writer John Callahan has amazingly survived working with four other playwrights on the project (Ayofemi Stowe, Robin Podolsky, Michael McClellan, and Don Disner). The play originally opened last year as part of the Fringe Festival and has now been recast and trimmed.

The result is a social record of gay life here that happily disdains polemics and dramatizes people instead of issues. The production also captures the particularity of L.A.’s ethnic mix, sharply dealing with the extra burden that gay-oriented Latino men, for example, face in a macho, Catholic culture.

The odyssey is narrated by a witty ringmaster (Amy Sunshine), who takes us on a gay pilgrims’ progress through homophobia, lesbian motherhood, gay fatherhood, the relentless bar scene, and political activism (notice Bibi Caspari’s prickly portrait of a radical).

The 10 performers deliver distinctive characterizations. The structure is fragmented, but the pace is brisk and the mobile set allows fluid transitions.

‘Landmarks and Detours’

Women in Theatre’s semi-annual Festival of New One Acts at the Richmond Shepard is high on craft and technique, low on social and political point.

That’s an interesting commentary in itself. These nine short plays are, by and large, carefully produced, skillfully written, and stylistically conservative (except for the overripe, self-conscious “In the Arms of the Beholden).

There are no plays dealing with equal rights, sexism, lesbianism, or women’s superiority. Most of them have male characters who are ordinary people, not subjects of ridicule--and five of the plays were directed by men.

In short, the work here is coolly professional and idiosyncratic, and on occasion humorous and whimsical. In Leslie Blasco’s “The Will,” a rural Nebraska family gathers to hear the reading of its fortunes on a sweltering day. Richard Haimowitz’s direction catches the relatives’ sleepy greed in contrast to the sweetness of the dim brother (Daniel Caldwell) who only wants to grow vegetables.

“Blind Date,” by Louanne Moldovan, reflects a poignant innocence in the entitled character, played with affection by Cari Dean Whittemore. And in the curtain-raiser, “Today’s Special,” the production introduces consummate diner character studies in the textured performances of Pat Mullins and Ken Hanes.

The program lasts nearly three hours, which is a touch long, but it’s staged with extreme crispness. The plays were developed in Women in Theatre’s Playwrights Workshop.

‘Some Men Need Help’

John Ford Noonan’s two-character play about alcoholism and male bonding features a wonderfully staged kitchen fight scene between a drunk and his solicitous neighbor, just before intermission.

But as the drinker gets dry in the second act at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, the drama turns soggy.

Strong production values defer the disappointment. Director Christopher A. Smith and designer Kevin Adams modulate a clean, well-lighted tone in a decorous, Connecticut kitchen set.

But the play’s major improbability--the alcoholic’s recovery through the grueling patience of a friend apparently with his own agenda--is difficult to overcome.

Actor Stephen T. Kay is a believably scuzzy, suburban drunk. But he’s totally unsympathetic when sober (a problem in plays about booze). His helpmate neighbor, a Mafioso-tinged performance by Jared Seide, is so noble and curiously dependent on the victim that his character is a turnoff, possibly even fake. This character never floats to the surface, taking the play down with him.

Staged by recent grads of Brown University, the production is a felicitous mix of tiresome material.

‘Fear’

Endless talkiness on the part of the dauntless British protagonist kills this murder mystery set in Belfast.

Playwright Mark Brennan wrote “Fear” in 1981 when he was 19. The play, and this American premiere directed by Jordan Charney at Actors Alley, evidence a gifted Irish playwright in search of momentum and dramatic structure.

Characterization the young Brennan has mastered. And the acting quintet at Actors Alley is properly Irish and weathered.

Steve Nevil as the Britisher in search of his brother’s murderer survives an impossible task. Slatternly Kathryn Graf fully mirrors the tawdry life of a Belfast hooker.

But the tone is grinding, the pacing paralyzing, and the story itself surprisingly uneventful, most of it unseen by the audience.