Last July I expressed skepticism — on a Hollywood Fringe panel and later in writing on this site — about the euphoric hopes that the Hollywood Fringe would somehow transform L.A. theater. That particular edition of LA Stage Watch drew a lot of comments – most of them still hopeful after all those words.

One of the responders, Gregory Crafts, asked whether I had seen a Fringe show called The Birthday Boys. He maintained that “it was better than anything I’ve seen at one of the ‘top tier’ LA companies. I put it right up there with some Broadway shows I’ve seen. I would be interested to hear what you thought.”

Unfortunately, The Birthday Boys was not among the nine Fringe shows I saw in June. And I was hardly alone. Even the helpful cooperative effort by the LA Weekly and Backstage to review as many Fringe shows as possible managed to miss The Birthday Boys – although at least it was acknowledged on a few web sites, including this one.

But the play went on to win the Hollywood Fringe First award as the Fringe’s outstanding world premiere. Thanks in part to that honor, the production was invited to participate in an extension of some of the Fringe shows at Theatre Asylum.

The Birthday Boys. Photo by Steve Kozak.

So I finally got to The Birthday Boys last weekend, three months after the Fringe. And I’m glad I did. While it was hardly “better than anything I’ve seen at one of the ‘top tier’ LA companies,” it was indeed among the top two of the 11 Fringe shows I’ve now seen (I also saw another of the shows extended at Theatre Asylum extensions since the Fringe).

The Birthday Boys details the ordeal of three Americans soldiers who are kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq. At first that set-up seems almost too easy for playwright Aaron Kozak (although not for the characters or the actors). Almost any writer could create something interesting out of such a naturally tense situation.

Kozak makes the three young actors remain in blindfolds, with hands and feet bound, throughout most of the play. The hard-working cast succeeds at transcending such restrictions and helps Kozak create somewhat involving characters. But the biggest challenge facing Kozak was to figure out how to end it.

He came up with a truly remarkable ending – something that I didn’t anticipate but that, in retrospect, seems at least somewhat plausible. Of course I can’t discuss it – the play has another weekend in its extension, and you really don’t want to know about it before you enter the theater. Even after the production closes, no one should publicly discuss the ending. It could easily be spoiled for those who see the next production. But it’s a fascinating topic for face-to-face discussion among friends who have seen the play together.

One topic for that private discussion – does the ending make the play feel a little too much like a stunt? Perhaps, but that doesn’t necessarily invalidate it. At least Kozak appears to be in complete control of the ride that he takes his audience on.

The Birthday Boys, Theatre Asylum, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Tonight-Sun, 8 pm. 800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com/event/123759

That sense of artistic control was missing from another recent play that refers to America’s recent wars, Titus Redux at the Kirk Douglas. This multimedia adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus was fascinating, but its transposition to the current Iraq-Afghanistan era felt sloppy and confused.

After my initial remarks about it in LA Stage Watch, its creator and director, John Farmanesh-Bocca, invited me to see it again. He wrote to me that it had been rushed into production without workshops or sufficient time. Even some of the favorable reviews indicated a degree of misunderstanding about what went on in the play, he wrote. “We knew we had missed them.”

Jack Stehlin as Titus and John Famanesh-Bocca as Aaron, his neighbor who isn't really a Jihadist. Photo by Ed Krieger.

Farmanesh-Bocca wants future audiences to understand that just about everything that happens in the production, after Titus returns home to D.C., is presented from the perspective of his post-traumatic-disordered brain. No, his wife doesn’t really collude in their daughter’s rape and mutilation, nor do their sons. The friendly neighbor (played by Farmanesh-Bocca) is not a sinister Jihadist waiting to pounce – that’s all in Titus’s head. “Giving the audience a simply harrowing experience was not the main goal,” wrote Farmanesh-Bocca. That goal was “to make them feel some of the heart-wrenching disorientation and confusion that PTSD sufferers face.”

From my own first viewing, it was clear that Titus was somewhat delusional – but it wasn’t clear to what extent. I saw the production again on its closing night – and it made a lot more sense for me, but then I had the advantage of having read a personal explanation from the director in my e-mail. I’m not sure if others who saw it for the first time at that closing performance necessarily understood it better than did the audience on opening night. Farmanesh-Bocca wrote that he hopes to “repair that airplane” before it flies again.

It’s good to see playwrights think imaginatively about how to dramatize America’s 21st-century wars. But by far the most affecting such plays to be seen in L.A. in recent weeks were the revivals of Tom Burmester’s and Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble’s Wounded and Nation of Two (the latter is the new title for the former Survived), at the Powerhouse. (A third play in LATE’s War Cycle trilogy is still waiting in the wings – it was workshopped along with the recent revivals of the earlier plays but has yet to officially premiere.)

These now-closed productions offer none of the high concepts at work in The Birthday Boys and Titus Redux – no surprise endings or Shakespearean plots. In Wounded and Nation of Two, Burmester employs old-fashioned realism. Many theater critics tend to disparage realism because it isn’t sufficiently different from the methods available in other media, but it worked like gangbusters in these two plays and in this small theater. These plays also could move audiences at a somewhat larger, actor-paying venue. I hope that midsize and even larger theaters are lining up to take a crack at them.