‘Big Show’ Delivers a Political Message

Did you really think the Actors’ Gang wouldn’t have something to say about U.S. policy in Central America?

In “The Big Show” (opening Friday at the Powerhouse), husband-and-wife TV game show hosts Len and Bunny Buer travel to the Third World--the fictional “Houndogua.” There they meet a variety of characters (all based on real-life 20th-Century figures): coffee farmer Guadalupe Salazar, show sponsor Mr. Shrimpy, Anton Bulldoza (a totalitarian dictator who gets toppled in a military coup) and the Sandabiscos, who supplant the new regime and become an affiliate of “The Russkie Show” and “The Cuba Show.”

“As the play evolves,” explained Michael Schlitt, who co-wrote with R. A. White, “the issues become more real, and the conflicts between Len and Bunny--ideologue and humanist, conservative and liberal--become more obvious. When Bunny finds that Len’s running a secret group down there, the Corndogs, she’s disgusted. The two of them represent the two (opposing) points of view of the American psyche: how they feed off of each other. The play isn’t saying, ‘Be a liberal’ or ‘Don’t be a liberal.’ The point is, get out of the country. Let those people run their own lives.”

HANDLE WITH CARE: A grandfather’s death throws a family into turmoil in Michael Farkash’s surrealistic drama “Perpetual Care,” opening tonight, under the aegis of Heliogabalus (the John Steppling-Robert Glaudini group) at the Cast Theatre. Hank Quinlan and R.K. Aitch co-direct.

“Benjamin dies, and leaves his money to his grandson Kenneth--leaving out his son Danny,” said the playwright, who is also entertainment editor for the Simi Valley Enterprise. “As soon as the grandson inherits all the money, he begins to turn into his father--treating people as commodities. Then Benjamin comes back as a ghost, continuing to harangue Danny. Even the supporting characters--like serviceman, the decorator--all turn into the ghost of Benjamin.”

Farkash allows that the subject doesn’t exactly make for a happy ending: “It’s extreme, hypersurreal--really more of a show than a play. You can think of the whole thing as Danny’s nightmare.”

NEW YORK NEWS: Chazz Palminteri’s “A Bronx Tale” (currently at Theatre West) will move to New York this fall. Stay tuned for dates and venue.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: “Sansei,” an autobiographical piece by the musical group Hiroshima, is playing at the Mark Taper Forum. Robert Egan directs.

Said The Times’ Sylvie Drake: “This is another of the Taper’s self- and socially-conscious ventures into the tortuous mine field of commissioned sociodramas. Like its most obvious artistic predecessor, ‘Green Card,’ developed at the Taper in 1986 to explore the lives of Los Angeles’ newest immigrants, ‘Sansei’ is a pseudo-play.”

From Daily Variety’s Kathleen O’Steen: “The four actors in the title roles--Marc Hayashi as Dan Kuramoto, Nelson Mashita as Danny Yamamoto, Lane Nishikawa as Johnny Mori and Natsuko Ohama as June Kuramoto--bring a sense of warmth, feeling and reality to these stories. It’s all told in a stylized, theatrical manner.”

The Daily News’ Tom Jacobs found “a work that will satisfy virtually no one. This concert-biography of the jazz-pop group Hiroshima will frustrate the theater crowd because it isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, a play. Fans of the band coming to hear a concert will be equally annoyed.”

In Drama-Logue, Polly Warfield was impressed: “ ‘Sansei is musically and visually exciting, theatrically viable, emotionally rewarding. You can also learn a lot . . . Somewhat in the intense, personal manner of ‘A Chorus Line,’ four actors relate the lives and personas of Hiroshima’s founders.”

Noted the Herald Examiner’s Richard Stayton: “While Hiroshima makes beautiful music, their vocabulary and stories are ordinary. Cliches and sentimentality constantly permeate the sketches. Their pop psychology conclusions to experience eliminate all conflict--but so do their lyrics . . . Bruce Springsteen they’re not.”

Said the Daily Breeze’s Willard Manus: “If ‘Sansei’ has one big weakness it is that it tries to tell everything about the band members’ experience growing up on the Pacific Rim. Too many similar stories told a little too fast can become confusing, even superficial. But taken as a whole, ‘Sansei’ stands out as a major statement by Asian-Americans about who they are and what they stand for.”

And from John Saito, Jr. in Rafu Shimpo (a Japanese-American newspaper): “ ‘Sansei’ is worthy of praise as both a cultural and musical piece, even though it deserves a slightly lesser grade from a dramatic standpoint. Still, in spite of some aesthetic flaws, (it) is an energetic and entertaining endeavor.”