STAGE REVIEW : ‘FUTURE AIN’T’ WHAT IT COULD BE

If nuclear holocaust qualifies as the highest-ranking issue of our time and the subject to avoid trivializing through art, the emotionally or physically deprived are close seconds.

Not that combustibility of subject matter has ever stopped anyone. Writers can’t resist it. But for every “Lower Depths” or “Les Miserables” there are dozens of more dubious well-intentioned efforts. Most recent of those is Zara Houshmand’s “The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be” at the Burbage Theatre Ensemble.

It takes the newest American tragedy, that of the homeless (or as Houshmand puts it, in a coy attempt at bureaucratic doublespeak, the “domicile deprived”), and turns it into something at once maudlin, cartoonish, absurd, touching and brutally stark.

Houshmand’s piece, formless enough to qualify as a work-in-progress, is a paradox of conflicting styles. With a nod to Gorky, she has taken a group of homeless people and stuffed them into a sampler of broken lives as neatly as director Deborah LaVine stuffs them into the nooks and crannies of Victoria Bryan’s urban-alley set.

The disenfranchised on display run the gamut from the bag lady who sweetly greets the audience (Helen Siff), to the evicted mother and baby convinced this is only a temporary situation (Barbra June Dodge), the sassy kid who thinks he’ll beat the system (Stuart Fratkin), assorted drunks, deviates, predatory human animals, the unbalanced and the physically ill.

Artfully intertwined in the realism--as a story told by the mother to her infant child--is the fragmentary apparition of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl (Jo Ann Willette). The symbolism of the device is appealing and clear, but the language far too sentimentally underscores a plea for compassion that is already obvious.

Less solvable is the injection of a third element that creates an even more serious problem: the cartoon presence of the bureaucracy designed to deal with the homeless.

In a stunningly naive effort to deride its ineffectiveness, Houshmand has come up with absurdities in a slapstick vein so much at odds with the rest of the piece that she severely undercuts her own intent.

As the dense and massively overworked relief agents who try to place people in phone booths, libraries (“the best daytime placement in town”) and park benches, Craig Berenson and Sheila Shaw are stuck with embarrassing lines that almost succeed in scuttling the rest of the piece.

Ultimately, it points to a fundamental flaw in “Future” that goes beyond that of clashing styles.

The collage suffers from the narrowness of its point of view and the author’s inexperience at broadening her moral and dramatic canvas. Here and there she’ll give us a startling moment (the Match Girl cameos, the staggering resolution of a struggle over the baby), but in too many cases she trivializes the very point she wants most to make by overstating it.

Much of “Future’s” partial success at the Burbage Theatre Ensemble must be attributed to LaVine’s astute directorial drive, Terri Gens’ intricate lighting and designer Bryan’s inspired costuming (a desperate array of rags and tatters) and oppressive set (plastered with newspapers, littered with garbage, steeped in stale air).

With the latter, the legitimate theater may be auguring a new wave of Sensurround. Psychologically, the effect is stifling. Practically, it also has the potential of driving an audience into the street.

The acting by a strong ensemble is uniformly good, with a particular nod to Siff who does a wonderful job with some of the play’s best lines--particularly the clever prologue that offers the best indication that there is a real writer in Houshmand. It probably also explains why, in spite of its flaws, Houshmand’s piece touches and reaches us at a certain level. Theater that does that can’t be all bad.

‘THE FUTURE AIN’T

WHAT IT USED TO BE’ A new play by Zara Houshmand, presented by the Burbage Theatre Ensemble, 2330 Sawtelle Blvd. in West Los Angeles . Producer Ivan Spiegel. Production associate Nancy Slepsky. Director Deborah LaVine. Set and costumes Victoria Bryan. Lighting Terri Gens. Sound design Rob Lowe, Gary Irvine. Properties Ame Easton. Stage manager Kate Wilbur. Cast Helen Siff, Barbra June Dodge, Jason Edwards, Mick E. Jones, Kimiko, Sallie Spencer, Hubert Braddock, Jose Torres, Stuart Fratkin, Dennis Madden, Derrick D. Wilson, Trent Withers, Jo Ann Willette, Craig Berenson, Sheila Shaw. Performances Thursdays through Sundays, 8:30 p.m. until Nov. 23 (213-478-0897).