Vaya Con Lola

Baba Yaga Productions at Ned Skinner Theater, 1501 10th Ave E, 325-6500. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm. Through Aug 24, $10.Vaya Con Lola is a wonderfully refreshing, thoroughly engaging new drama about mother /daughter and sister/sister relationships, in a Chicana context. Set in the decaying house of drunken matriarch Lola, the show begins with estranged daughters Lolli and Lulu returning home to find their mother in a strange, quixotic descent into madness. From there, the sisters must navigate the complex and magnetic pull of their family as they struggle to compose lives and histories of their own.

Running just over an hour, Vaya Con Lola moves swiftly and close to seamlessly, with subtle pacing and delicate, almost cinematic lighting and sound design. Director Sheila Daniels brings a nuanced focus and efficiency to the work, using each actor's physical space to communicate their character's emotional state. Monica Appleby's text is familiar and unsettling, self-aware and shimmering; think Our Town with awesome Chicana protagonists and antiheroes. Appleby's writing reflects a welcome discipline that allows her to tackle multidimensional characters with a light hand, steering her heroines from potentially melodramatic, self-serving ground with style. In addition, Appleby's performance as Lulu brings searing, haunting anger and depth to the show.

Gina Malvestuto's work as Lulu's sister Lolli also deserves praise. Brave, thoroughly committed, and emotionally gutsy, Malvestuto brings a mesmerizing spark to Lolli. Finally, Meg Savlov's work as the titular character defies definition and description. Understated, fucking hilarious, and thoroughly heartbreaking, Savlov is a firecracker. Her Lola is both the inebriated captain and rusted anchor of the show, and both cast and crew understand this concept perfectly. LINDSAY MARSAK

American Voices: Bukowski, Micheline, and the First Amendment

Theatre Under the Influence at Union Garage, 1418 10th Ave, 720-1942. Fri-Sat at 9 pm. Through Aug 23, $12.Dr. Freud once opined that classroom moralizing was a major factor contributing to the prevalence of neurosis. The Golden Rule and other Christian ethics dominate school lessons, leaving children to be thrust, unprepared, into a cruel, selfish world; the shock is so great, the theory goes, it compromises their social mental health.

Vincent Balestri's new one-man show, American Voices, examines writers Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski, Bukowski's column "Notes from a Dirty Old Man" in the San Francisco magazine Open City, and the 1968 obscenity charges that closed the publication. It is an unsettling show, a rough-hewn work about gritty writers whose subject matter is equally raw. Drunkenness, loneliness, and disgust are their refrains. Balestri manages the transition between the erratic Micheline and the shuffling Bukowski well, and he puts an earnest punch into the peculiar genre of 1960s poetry and prose.

In the first act, Micheline reads the piece of obscenity in question--a short story titled "Skinny Dynamite." You'd have to hear it to get the full flavor, but it's amusing to imagine judges and agents of the late '60s puzzling over whether the story was obscenity or art. Which is exactly what the audience is asked to do--vote on "Skinny Dynamite." Obscenity or art?

In the second act, Bukowski mutters that his writings, and the writings of his fellows, are discomforting grunts and shrieks from lonely apartments and trash-choked gutters. Like Freud, he claims them as essential American voices, carefully excised from public classrooms, the finishing schools of citizenship. If we stifle them, we willfully blind ourselves to part of America.

As Balestri/Bukowski made this observation, I thought that the drunken old poet was out of date--with On the Road and "Howl" on high school syllabi, this is a different age than the one he railed against. But to close the show, Balestri tabulated the votes for "Skinny Dynamite": seven for obscenity, seven for art. A tie. In a small fringe theater on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Bukowski, I stand corrected. We still have some things to learn from the Dirty Old Man. BRENDAN KILEY

Money & Run Episode 6: Eyepatch of the Tiger

Theater Schmeater, 1500 Summit Ave,

324-5801. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm, matinee performances Sun at 7 pm. Through Aug 24, $12-$15, under 18 free.Most of the original cast is back in Money & Run Episode 6, and this is a good thing. The formula that makes Money & Run a minor local phenomenon is delicate, and tampering tends to winnow away its singular charms. For instance? Well, I may be set in my ways (I'm a veteran of five M&R episodes), but when I go to a Money & Run show, I want the whole, in quotes, "Money & Run experience." Like the show starting at 10:00 or 11:00 p.m.--as it used to. A huge chunk of M&R's charm is context, and a rowdy, rock 'n' roll 11:00 audience adds to that "experience." A milky, wizened, "Grandma's in town, let's take her to see that Money & Run business over on Capitol Hill" 8:00 audience does not.

I told you it's a delicate formula.

For both of you who don't know, Money & Run is a serial spoof of an early '80s Dukes of Hazzard-esque TV show. The series features better fight choreography than a bad episode of Buffy (meaning it's really good), lots of hee-sterical Southern-fried one-liners, noble antiheroes, and scheming, eccentric villains. Episode 6 features lots of pathos, patriotism, sweaty men in boxer shorts, and all the trademark M&R shenanigans.

I welcome back Lisa Neal as Money and Joshua Sliwa as Run, romantic antiheroes who bristle with sexual chemistry (Miss Neal's abs are of steel, and Joshua's lambchop sideburns are entrancing). The very talented Brandon Whitehead dazzles as O. T., the town drunk/would-be hero, and Julie Rawley is gleefully villainous as Big Momma Bob (think insane transvestite hobo). Episode 6 seems like a slicker production than usual (there's a set), but it boasts plenty of the things that make an M&R show worth seeing. If they'd only get back doing those great late-night performances.... ADRIAN RYAN