Irish family under the microscope

A flawed but vivid rendering of a troubled Irish family, “The Pagans,� at the Road Theatre, receives an optimum production from director Scott Cummins, set designer Desma Murphy and a solid cast.

For the Riordan clan, a working-class family in a small town in County Clare, little things loom large. A cherished table, a battered chair are guarded with fierce possessiveness by these hardscrabble have-nots. When real crisis cracks the bell jar, most weather the storm valiantly, while one is fatally ill-equipped to cope.

Among the valiant is family matriarch Margaret Riordan (Taylor Gilbert), who intervenes in the ongoing squabbles between her husband, Thomas (James K. Ward), her vinegary unmarried sister Frances (Peggy Billo) and her former football hero son Tadhg (Erin Beaux). Tadhg’s sole occupations are boozing with his chum Bobby (Alex Douglas) and caring for his illegitimate son when the boy’s mum Danaan (Marci Hill) is working at the local fish factory. When Michael (Shaun O’Hagan), the family’s prodigal son, returns from New York with a rich and beautiful American bride (Lauren Clark), dark secrets come to light.

Ann Noble’s messy but moving yarn relies overmuch on stereotypes, and transitions between some scenes seem trumped up. Despite that, “Pagans� turns an artist’s microscope onto a deceptively slight microcosm, where seemingly uneventful lives take on epic proportions.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“The Pagans,� the Road Theatre, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. Ends April 24. $20. (818) 761-8829. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

*

A play of poetry, dance and suicide

“Dear Diary: Forgive me, for I am about to sin. Today is a good day to die.�

The impact this phrase carries in print pales beside its synoptic, antiphonal effect in “Diary of a Catholic School Dropout� in North Hollywood. The Los Angeles African American Repertory Company’s premiere of Layon Gray’s poetic dance play about nine suicidal parochial students is a remarkable exercise in acute ensemble resonance.

Writer-director-choreographer Gray (“Meet Me at the Oak,� “Soldiers Don’t Cry�) draws his fact-inspired abstractions in specific strokes that blend into nuance. The prototypes intersect in tragicomic monologues delivered from all over Elisabeth Weber’s school assembly styled setting. The symbolist trajectory approaches its stark denouement via pep-squad moves, choral techniques and ritual maneuvers that shake and hypnotize the wee Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center venue.

Gray is an industry Renaissance man of imposing imagination, and his fluid staging strikes at audience nerves. His resourceful lighting and Jackie Cole’s classroom togs achieve vivid symbiosis against Weber’s reformatory edifice.

The fervent cast burns down the house: Juliana Dever, Staci Ashley, Fabienne Maurer, Horomi Dames, Carmen Perez, Tracy Mork, Tiffany Phillips, Rachel Leah Cohen and the eponymous Rich. They all rock.

The clear textual precedent is Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf�). Gray’s savage humor and archdiocese angst often suggest “For Catholic Girls Who Have Managed Suicide/When the Rainbow Coalition Ain’t Enuf.�

What “Dropout� misses is Shange’s reach beyond the final curtain. The script’s brevity prohibits profundity. This hardly discounts Gray and company’s accomplishment, though. It will make a sensational film.

-- David C. Nichols

“Diary of a Catholic School Dropout,� Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center, 11006 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends March 14. Mature audiences. $15. (818) 761-0704. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.

*

Ireland reduced to clunky allegory

You don’t need extraordinary powers of perception to see where “Molly Sweeney� is headed. Brian Friel’s didactic, overdetermined three-hander announces its tragic arc from the first scene, in which saintly, sightless Molly (Elizabeth A. Genge) recounts her father’s lessons in touch, smell and sound.

“Trust me, you’re not missing a lot,� he tells his blind daughter in a whiskey-tinged whisper.

Apparently Molly doesn’t take his word for it, as she later submits to corrective surgery at the insistence of her enthusiastic husband, Frank (Dan Conroy), who for all his voracious reading apparently overlooked any cautionary tales about the cognitive challenges faced by the newly sighted.

Equally blithe about the consequences of her operation is the washed-up sawbones himself, Mr. Rice (Mark Hein), who sees it as a chance to revive his faltering career. Of course, he’s awfully sorry -- if troublingly unsurprised -- when his “miracle Molly� doesn’t take to sight so easily, slipping into a “borderline country� between the real and the imaginary.

In short, courageous Molly is a cipher, a victim -- Friel’s default vision of Ireland and the Irish. In less doting hands than those of director Marianne Savell, who lingers earnestly over every insight and equivocation, this fatalism might be less tiring.

But even with the fine efforts of her actors -- Conroy is particularly offhanded and inviting, and Genge’s face takes on a hauntingly beatific cast as Molly regresses -- “Molly Sweeney� is a long sit. Its tidy object lessons and thematic reiterations, rendered in knowing, often flowery monologues rather than dramatized, make it feel like a cross between a TV movie and a classroom lecture. Visionary it’s not.

-- Rob Kendt

“Molly Sweeney,� Soft Landing Productions and the Eclectic Company Theatre at the Eclectic Company Theatre, 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Mar. 20. $15. (818) 508-3003. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.