PERFORMANCE ART REVIEW : Eclectic Program From Electric Range at Studio 3-A

Susan Mogul’s answering machine message from Death Valley saying she had to miss the performance was as apt an opener as any for the eclectic and ragged Electric Range program at Studio 3-A in downtown Los Angeles Saturday night.

In “Shock Crossing,” Kathryn Posyn spun, jumped and gestured in a stunted, inconclusive way while speaking to her absent, emotionally distant husband and sending quasi-poetic, lustful thoughts to a nearby construction worker. Hard-hatted Howard Sun Tom, whose crosscutting monologue about his daily concerns sounded flat and unconvincing, erupted in silly-looking pile-driving gyrations.

Alan Pulner’s masked bogyman in a cap with a revolving light segued into a monologue about fear in “Under the Bed/Falling From the Sky.” Stagey vocal and gestural effects pushed this piece overboard even before Pulner began his bump-and-grind-illustrated lecture on the fearful body’s chemical reactions.

In “Reservations,” green-wigged Deborah Oliver repeatedly rolled off her chair while remonstrating in terse, repeated phrases with Peter Schroff, busy with a golf club when he wasn’t striking coldly remote poses.

Jackson Hughes’ amusing and vocally accomplished “Direct from Limburg” presented an international cast in the past lives of a shy German scientist who discovered he was a channeler.

Diane Torr punctuated her evocative if meandering reminiscence of an Afghan woman and her family with stately, I-am-a-Western-woman-doing-the-best-I-can snippets of local dances and quick impressions of individuals. But the go-go dancer ending seemed plucked out of thin air to make a feminist point.