The Shape of Things
Repertory Actors Theatre at Richard Hugo House
Through March 26.

Barefoot in the Park
ArtsWest
Through March 26.

The new company Atlas Theatre is kicking off with a compressed--but still lengthy--adaptation of Tolstoy's mammoth Anna Karenina. Helen Edmundson's script, which is propelled by meta-commentary from alternating protagonists Anna (Samara Lerman) and Levin (Chris Mayse), gets a little episodic at the end. The fault is exaggerated in an uneven production like this one, in which one strand of narration is far more compelling than the other. The audience ends up feeling jerked along.

Lerman is a blunt actress; her sentiments color entire paragraphs rather than flowing organically from one idea to the next. She could probably hold up well enough against a strong partner, but she keeps being cast opposite anemic men: Aaron Ousley, in the role of her lover Vronksy, lacks all heft. Their scenes end up looking starved, especially next to the touching relationship of Mayse and Regan deVictoria (as Kitty), who inject an improbable humanity into their blandly idealistic characters.

The production design is restrained and, for the most part, effective, and the ensemble (particularly Christine White and Karen Gruber) is very strong. The reaper in the ninja costume, however--I will freely admit that choice went sailing over my head.

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The Shape of Things, a Neil LaBute play that premiered in 2001, derived its horror from the time-tested proscription against messing with God's creation. The mechanism that LaBute used to flog this theme, however, was the "extreme makeover," and in the four years since the play was first performed, reality TV has completely cannibalized LaBute's vision. I don't think it betrays too much of the play's contrived ending to say that Adam's passive transformation at the hands of his girlfriend Evelyn can't hope to compete with the gruesome complicity of contestants on The Swan.

So in ReAct's tepid production, directed by David Hsieh, it's hard to dredge up much sympathy for David S. Hogan, who plays Adam as a dull, puppy-dog victim. Angela diMarco, as his seductress Evelyn, makes a perfectly ditzy MFA student, but she hasn't fully internalized the script's bitter misogyny, and she conveys neither her character's animating evil nor the overpowering magnetism needed to mask it.

The supporting actors, Jeffrey Grimm and Mona Leach, are entertainingly goofy and sweet, but you just feel sorry for the ensemble, who trot across the stage at random moments to give the impression of a bustling college campus. The army of extras succeeds only in making the show look like amateur hour; and the grainy slideshows between scenes reinforce that picture.

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Neil Simon's early comedy about a pair of newlyweds in New York is even more dated (Barefoot in the Park had its sexy, decidedly pre-feminist debut in 1963), and it certainly doesn't make for a challenging addition to the ArtsWest season. But thanks to the quick-paced direction of Mavis Lamb and an effervescent performance from Greta Bloor as the young bride Corie, it makes for an amusing evening.

Corie and her new husband, a starched lawyer named Paul (Michael Rotman Koenen), are moving into a "tiny" (read: palatial, by 21st-century standards) sixth-floor apartment in Manhattan, where they pay a massive amount (read: a pittance, even accounting for inflation) in rent. The couple barely know each other, and although they seem to get along very nicely in bed (Corie evangelizes about the joy of sex to her own poor mother), they haven't quite acknowledged their contrasting appetites for adventure. And thus begins a knockdown, screaming fight that's hysterical in both senses of the word.

Bloor is adorable and she trains her character's disarming debutante charm as easily as she'd aim a flashlight--you'd be forgiven for blinking at the program once or twice when you read that she's currently earning her BS in neurobiology. As her sparring partner, Koenen has his weak points. His staid preoccupations in Act 1 can be a bit dry, and his Act 2 drunkenness is excessively slurry. But once Bloor prods him into the upper reaches of anger, he's hilarious. Their chemistry is lovely to behold, and the only time their repartee really falters is when they half wink at and half gulp down a racist joke. Such are the hazards of revivals.

annie@thestranger.com