Giving his father a loving tribute

Greg Lewis is one of those craggy character actors whose faces are instantly recognizable, even though their names may elude you.

Lewis reflects on his Greek roots and his showbiz past in “Some Greeks Are Not in the Restaurant Business,” his one-man show at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. Director Robert Walden once again helms Lewis’ reminiscences. (Lewis’ solo show “Gregory,” directed by Walden, played this venue in 1999.)

There’s no shortage of juicy anecdotes in this latest autobiographical outing. Lewis is blessed with a Proustian memory and a keen sense of comic timing honed during his years as half of the comedy duo Lewis & Christy, “the Mad Greeks.”

He got his break at age 15 with the celebrated group the Harmonicats. Indeed, Lewis remains a dazzling harmonica player, as he proves here several times. Eventually, a grueling schedule drove him to a near-fatal brush with drugs and booze.

However, Lewis’ real business in “Greeks” is sorting out his complicated relationship with his father, a harshly paternalistic Greek restaurant proprietor whom Lewis brings to vibrant life. Although his father died of a heart attack before the two were able to achieve any emotional intimacy, Lewis redresses that deficit, movingly, in this loving tribute to the man it has taken him a lifetime to understand -- and forgive.

Walden’s simple staging places Lewis in an armchair and mostly leaves him there, a simple tack that lends a cozy “fireside chat” ambience to the proceedings. A few flaws are apparent. The structure of the show is somewhat episodic, and Lewis has a distracting tic of playing with his fingers. That’s nitpicking, however. A congenial host and no mean raconteur, Lewis shares his droll memories with humor and generosity.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Some Greeks Are Not in the Restaurant Business,” Beverly Hills Playhouse, 254 S. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills. 8 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 9. $20. (310) 358-9936, www.camelotartists.com. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

A ‘Titus’ that’s overwrought

Equal parts inspiration and overkill course across “Titus Andronicus.” Shakespeare’s grisly first tragedy gets a creatively twisted, Mussolini-era overhaul by the Porters of Hellsgate, a promising young company with a fine handle on iambic pentameter and rather more zeal than synthesis.

“Titus’ ” title character (the ferocious Charles Pasternak) returns from a decade of war to a Rome in disarray after the emperor’s death. Despite being the people’s choice, as his brother (Jack Leahy) informs us, Titus declines the throne, deferring to Saturninus (Jonathon Bangle), the emperor’s eldest son.

Smartly using the multilevel, bare-bones space, director Natasha Vargas-Cooper draws neat current parallels. Power-mad Saturninus and Basianus (Patrick J. Saxon), his egalitarian brother, embody the red-blue divide. Titus and his sons, led by Lucius (Adam McCrory), drag out their captives -- Goth queen Tamora (Amanda Marquardt), her sons and archvillain Aaron the Moor (Eddie Castuera) -- in an Abu Ghraib-like tableau.

After Titus sacrifices Tamora’s eldest son, earning her undying enmity, and Lavinia (Taylor Fisher), Titus’ daughter, rejects Saturninus for fiancé Basianus, the new emperor marries Tamora. An absurdly gory revenge saga follows.

Vargas-Cooper and designers Daniel Keck (lighting) and Jessica Pasternak (costumes) are resourceful, from the beribboned approach to Lavinia’s mutilation to the Tarantino-tinged comeuppance of Tamora’s rapacious surviving offspring (Bryant Romo and Brandon Gilbrech).

Yet the mix of humor and terror is erratic, and a tendency toward high-decibel attack impedes dramatic build. Even if one agrees with critic Harold Bloom that the ideal “Titus” director would be Mel Brooks, the thunderously overwrought declamation that too many members of the valiant cast display serves neither heightened tension nor irreverent laughter. Though it may well gain a cult following, “Titus Andronicus” is mainly a signpost for what this nervy troupe will yet achieve.

-- David. C. Nichols

“Titus Andronicus,” Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center, 11006 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 9. $15. (310) 804-1759. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

What’s meant to be bad and the bad

For most of the first act of “Lucy & the Wolf,” Stefan Marks’ world-premiere play at the Two Roads Theatre, you will be intrigued by the circuitously vapid chatter between the play’s eponymous characters, slack-jawed lowlifes who are, initially at least, richly and humorously reiterative. Before long, however, you might suspect that all that comical circularity is leading you to a dead end. And you’d be right.

The play opens on Johnny Wolf (Scott Conte) with a gun in his mouth. When Lucy (Tara Hunnewell) happens by, Wolf’s suicide segues into a bout of hot sex. A brooding hit man, Johnny connects keenly with Lucy, a bubbly blond whose sex-doll effervescence eventually leaks deadly rage. Suffice to say, their romance ends badly.

Lucy and the Wolf speak with Grand Ole Opry accents, but their actual antecedents remain vague, as does the precise reason why both occasionally break into song (original music by Marks and Kelly King). Marks’ direction is almost surreally broad, but the able Conte and Hunnewell are gripping in their excess.

Spoiler alert. Marks has a “surprise” in store for you. In the second act, we learn that the Wolf and Lucy are actually characters in a play, portrayed by Keith, an aging actor whose marriage to Emily (Patty Medina) is unraveling, and Melanie, his younger costar, recently engaged to her doctor boyfriend, Mark (Jason Huber). Secretly smitten with each other, Keith and Melanie never act on their mutual attraction. When their play wraps, so does their unrequited romance.

Ha-ha. Tricked you, the writer seems to say. The reason the first act seems like such a bad play is that it is a bad play. So more fool you for becoming emotionally invested in the first place. But Marks’ pedestrian “real” characters plunge this potentially absorbing theatrical novelty into anticlimax. A bold theatrical experimenter with a proven track record, Marks loses his grip on his slippery concept, blurring the intentionally bad with the actually awful.

-- F.K.F.

“Lucy & the Wolf,” Two Roads Theatre, 4348 Tujunga Ave., Studio City. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, Sept. 23 and 30. Ends Sept. 30. $15. (888) 210-3649. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.