‘Grandsons’ Offers Fertile Ground for Satire

What’s a manipulative maniac of a mom to do? Mother (Michael Learned) believes that the sacred responsibility of any woman is to propagate her male line. In other words, Mother wants grandsons--now.

Does the niggling fact that her son (Steven Sennett) happens to be gay stop Mother? Not on your domineering life, it doesn’t. Penny Black’s translation of German playwright Thomas Jonigk’s flawed yet scathing farce “You Shall Give Me Grandsons,” at the Marilyn Monroe Theatre, has the kind of darkly satiric experimentalism that is time-honored in the German theater. An equal-opportunity iconoclast, Jonigk lampoons the entire societal spectrum, particularly mankind’s rampant venality, through the microcosm of his hilariously dysfunctional family.

The warped upstage mirrors of Meike Urban’s set reflect the distorted images of those in the audience--a witty visual metaphor for Jonigk’s worldview. Makeup artist Astrid Bitzer festoons the cast with the most outrageous wigs this side of a drag show.

“Grandsons” could best be described as a drawing-room comedy set in a circus. German director Burkhard C. Kominski balances the play’s broadness with delicately disciplined timing. The comically inspired, aerobically silly performers, particularly Learned and Bjorn Johnson as Mother’s other son, are uniformly effervescent--but a reiterative second act needs trimming so that Jonigk’s very funny play can travel more lightly.

* “You Shall Give Me Grandsons,” Marilyn Monroe Theatre at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Jan. 26. $10. (213) 650-7777. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.