Love despite betrayal

A dark chapter from L.A.’s past -- the 1904 attempted-murder trial of mining magnate and philanthropist Griffith J. Griffith (of Griffith Park fame) -- is rescued from obscurity in “Crazy Drunk” at [Inside] the Ford.

Robert Fieldsteel’s new drama explores the common threads in the famous personalities and circumstances that left an indelible imprint on the city when Griffith, after interrogating his wife, Tina, about her supposed collusion with Pope Pius X, shot her in the head at point-blank range.

She survived, and her subsequent ambivalence toward Griffith is among the episode’s most intriguing puzzles. So intriguing, in fact, that Griffith’s celebrated defense attorney, Earl Rogers (Maury Sterling), finds the human core of his case in “a love beneath the logic of betrayal.” In this case, Rogers pioneered the defense of “innocent by reason of alcohol-induced insanity.”

The defense and the curious kind of love are as rooted in Rogers’ personal demons as in his client’s. For all his brilliance (perhaps because of it, Fieldsteel suggests), Rogers died an alcoholic, tragically beyond the attempted intervention of his daughter, Adela Rogers St. Johns (Alicia Wollerton), the columnist who later became famous as the “Mother Confessor” to Hollywood celebrities.

In well-matched casting, the secular concerns of Kevin Weisman’s Griffith clash with the devout Catholicism of Kara Zediker’s Tina, and the confrontation between Sterling and Wollerton at Rogers’ sanity hearing is heart-rending in depicting inadequacies of the most loving intentions.

Remaining faithful to historical circumstance constrains the play’s ability to explore its broader themes, requiring a stagy overreliance on exposition at times. Matt Almos’ energetic staging for Buffalo Nights theater company effectively uses his performers to enliven the narrative, and employs an abstract, highly stylized presentation that slyly taps the mannered stiffness of the period. As dramatizations of celebrity crimes go, “Crazy Drunk” far surpasses its close theatrical sibling, “The Cat’s Meow,” inspired by an incident in William Randolph Hearst’s life.

*

‘Crazy Drunk’

Where: [Inside] the Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood.

When: Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. (dark on Thanksgiving)

Ends: Dec. 22

Price: $15-$20

Contact: (323) 461-3673

Running Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes