‘Games’ of Corruption and Manners

Hollywood provides endless stories of moral corruption in a glamorous setting, soit’s hardly surprising that the latest presentation by the Oxblood playwright collective focuses on the movie business.

Hank Bunker’s heavy-handed piece at Glaxa Studios, “The Noon of Games,” lacks the somber mystery and mesmerizing obtuseness of other Oxblood productions, but Shannon Holt shimmers as a lustful vixen who manages to look elegant even when splattered with blood.

Mo (Holt), the heiress of a powerful movie-making family, confronts her husband (Mickey Swenson)--who is named Don Drysdale, just like the famous Dodger--after reading his journal. Mo is coolly sophisticated, dressed in a beaded and sequined midriff-baring halter top and a long, gray skirt. Don is a frazzled mess, a onetime high school baseball player now dressed in an oversized Dodgers shirt and black exercise pants.

Among other things, Don’s diary reveals his infidelity with Mo’s unseen friend, making his position in this family precarious.

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Meanwhile, there’s a question of whether Mo’s divorce from Bob Gibson (Tony Forkush) was ever finalized. Bob, now out on parole for spousal abuse, has crawled back to Mo, who has given him a job despite her anger over his false claim that he was “heterosexual, mostly.” Things get gory when Mo’s Uncle Frank (David Weininger) decides Bob’s parole monitoring device must come off--even if it means using power tools and spilling a lot of blood.

Uncle Frank decides Don must die, and Mo has found a prospective boyfriend, Carlton (Peter Konerko), who has been tenaciously standing outside the mansion in an old-fashioned baseball uniform for several days.

The tie-in with baseball doesn’t always work as a metaphor for lost time, forgotten boyish dreams or foolish middle-aged attempts to regain youthful prowess. The longhaired, bearded Carlton, with his brooding eyes and alarming (at least to Mo) insistence on chastity, doesn’t have the allure of myth.

What the producer’s notes call “postwar American archetypes” seem more hackneyed than enlightening. Baseball fans might take exception to Bunker’s naming two of his sleazy characters after baseball Hall of Famers.

It’s especially disconcerting that the sleaziest and weakest character, Bob, is played by a white actor but named after an African American star.

Under Bunker’s direction, the characteristic Oxblood acting style of stiff aloofness works against the sentimental aspects of his script.

Yet a dark comedy of manners is suggested in this tangled tale. Holt is entertaining as she flickers between moments of steely anger and lust or attempts to regain her composure after she has been sprayed with blood and finds herself in front of the new object of her desire.

BE THERE

“The Noon of Games,” Glaxa Studios, 3707 W. Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 19. $12. (323) 692-7746. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.