Inspired Presentation Helps, Lack of Focus Hurts, in ‘Air’

The passengers aboard Flight 911 are a troubled bunch. The swishy travel agent moans about his boyfriend’s cheating. The group therapy patient suffers from advanced egomania. And it’s all the goofy pilot can do to keep the plane horizontal.

Actor-writer Don Cummings impersonates these and eight more equally oddball characters in “American Air,” a fitfully entertaining, ultimately frustrating one-man show at Theatre/Theater in Hollywood.

Cummings, billed as a veteran off-Broadway performer, obviously has talent. A monologuist in the Eric Bogosian mode, he conjures vivid, off-beat characters and superbly mimics their gestures and speech patterns. His French flight attendant, for example, is convincing enough to serve cognac on a Paris-bound trip. And there are some terrific stabs of wit, such as when a middle-aged matron advises, “When you die, you have to face everything you’ve ever eaten.”

Yet the show as a whole never quite lives up to Cummings’ inspired presentation.

The need to develop some sort of unifying conceit is understandable, but in this case building the routines around an ill-fated plane trip seems forced. These characters are so distinctive (and in some cases so neurotic) that a story line only distracts.

Though each character is related in some way to another, Cummings and director Michael Cooper fail to make the connections satisfying. Collette--a pretentious, appearance-obsessed young dancer--is interesting because of her vanity and idiosyncrasies, not because of her feuds with her boyfriend and a fellow therapy patient.

But the trickiest problem may be one of tone, or lack thereof. Unlike Bogosian and similar performers, Cummings yields few clues as to how he, or the audience, should regard these creations. Are they meant to be ridiculed, pitied, admired, ignored?

Despite its creator’s high-powered performance talent, “American Air” leaves a residue of “yeah, so?” trailing in its wake.

* “American Air,” Theatre/Theater, 1713 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 15. $12. (213) 850-6941. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.