'Dylan' takes the stage

Playwright Sidney Michaels' "Dylan," which follows the famous Welsh poet Dylan Thomas on his infamous early 1950s reading tours of America, suffers from "Amadaeus" syndrome: the compulsion to reduce a legendary artist to a caricature of his most frivolous self.

That the real Thomas womanized excessively, spent his money foolishly and drank himself to an early death while in America are facts. But he was also a great and important writer, facts that "Dylan," like Milos Forman's 1984 film about Wolfgang Mozart, consider less dramatically interesting than his well-worn debauchery.

It is fortunate, then, that the cast of The Theater Group's production is so universally talented, and that the two leads - Dave Higgins as Thomas and Pat Destro as his wife Caitlan - make such a captivating and contentious couple.

The action of "Dylan" moves back and forth between Thomas' travels in the states and his beachside home in Wales, where Caitlan - once a promising artist herself before grounding her career for matrimony and motherhood - cares for three ch ildren while she frets and fumes over Dylan's reckless carousing.

Meanwhile the poet is wined and dined by the most bellicose bourgeois of 1950s America (nicely detailed by costume designer Shon LeBlanc and set designer John Gilles).

Much is ma de of Thomas' perpetual pauperism. Michaels attempts to present him as a martyr done in by the artists' eternal enemy of commerce, but the effort collapses under the audience's knowledge that Thomas has three (four counting Caitlan) hungry mouths to feed back in Wales.

Director Robert Walden (he played Joe Rossi on television's "Lou Grant") has a fine touch with the play's pacing. Walden does have the advantage of an abundance of bar and party scenes; nevertheless the action moves swiftly a nd smoothly (with the exception of an ill-advised final scene featuring the entire cast singing a hymn of mourning to the deceased poet).

"Dylan" closes Oct. 16. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. at the Skylight Theatre, 1816 1/2 Vermont Ave., in Hollywood. Admission is $20. For information, call (213) 660-8587.