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Monologues Unravel Mystery in ‘Angels’

Writer-director Mark Soper poses an intriguing premise: What if your life depended on a soccer ball? Not just any soccer ball, but the only soccer ball belonging to Lincoln Elementary School on a certain April rush-hour morning in Los Angeles. In “An Age of Angels,” a wickedly funny Grace Players production at the Egyptian Arena Theatre, the lives of nine disparate, hyper-anxious characters intersect with disastrous results.

Presented as a series of monologues, all done with equal skill and manic gusto, this piece doesn’t readily reveal its course. This is a mystery, like one people face every day, with the cast of characters brought together mostly by happenstance, each with separate stories and interpretations of events.

This “Rashomon”-esque scenario begins with a pedophile (Brant Cotton) longingly watching schoolchildren and desiring “violence to that infant innocence.” But the children--the sweaty, nervous nerd (Travis Michael Holder), the tomboy (Alison McMillan) who wants “to be a lesbian and make lots of men feel silly and little,” the bully (Zak Tiegen) who can’t quit being a bully because “everyone would be disappointed”--are not really so naive. The adults, with the exception of the cop (Lionel Mark Smith), are all deeply troubled with rage, ready to bubble over. Yet the danger comes accidentally, through a moment of carelessness.

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By attaching a disclaimer in the last monologue, Soper doesn’t let us dwell on the horrible fate. And while this thrusts the proceedings back into intellectual ponderings, it is jarring in its attempt to emulate a Shakespearean sound. This is a minor quibble, considering the bitingly witty character studies that constitute this sly account of life in Los Angeles.

* “An Age of Angels,” Grace Players, Egyptian Arena Theatre, 1625 N. Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 8. $10. (213) 464-1222. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

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