The thud you heard emanating from the stage of the Kirk Douglas Theater was the sound of Tim Crouch’s Adler & Gibbs laying a gigantic egg. The 90-minute play, which comes to L.A. after productions at the Royal Court and Sundance Theater Lab, is a dud of a theatrical exercise: badly written and directed, devoid of passion or life, tedious from start to finish. Crouch, who is British, has become an expert in the art of theatrical deconstruction; some of his previous experimental performances, notably Author and An Oak Tree, had a freshness and audacity about them, particularly in the way they involved the audience in the story-telling. This time around, though, Crouch and his four fellow actors (one of whom is a prop-dispensing child, Olivia Abedor) stand stock-still on stage as they speak their lines in the manner of a schoolmarm reciting from a Latin text. Occasionally a bizarrely dressed girl (Jillian Pullara) steps to a microphone and delivers some exposition. It’s all very cold and alienating. The story, such as it is, tells the fictional tale of a dead artist named Janet Adler, who after becoming rich and famous, renounced the crassness of the art world and retired to the country with her lover and muse, Margaret Gibbs. Louise, an actress (Cath Whitefield) travels with Sam, her acting coach and diffident boyfriend (Crouch) to the derelict mansion where Gibbs (Gina Moxley) is — surprise! — still living after Adler’s death. Louise wants to play Adler in a film which her art-dealer husband has financed, hoping that the flick will raise the value of Adler’s canvases. But the reclusive, sharp-tongued Gibbs hates movies almost as much as she hates the art world and tells Louise to get stuffed. Arguments and recriminations follow, leading to physical clashes and the spilling of blood. With its all-too-familiar setup — young couple stumbling into a kind of haunted house — Adler & Gibb might have made a creepy, even scary B-movie. But as a play with significance on its mind (the greed of the art world), Adler & Gibb struggles to come alive, only to fall flat on its fanny.
