Last Chance

Theater

War Music -- In a haunting presentation by Playwrights’ Arena and the Echo Theater Company at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, Bryan Davidson’s play suggests that the truest counterbalance to war’s destruction is to go on creating. The story is divided into movements, each inspired by the life of a composer: Frank Bridge, Anton Webern and Olivier Messiaen. The first charges into a firefight in which a soldier, a pianist, loses an arm, prompting “Three Improvisations for the Left Hand.” The final movement is inspired by “Quartet for the End of Time,” which Messiaen wrote while a prisoner of war.

-- Daryl H. Miller

Ends Sunday at Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., L.A. (213) 473-0640.