`DEMETER' FINDS TRAGEDY IN FOSTER CARE.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

The company has turned 20 and, not coincidentally, has populated its latest production with 20-year-olds. They've installed a new artistic director and mounted a play whose subject touches on the changing of seasons.

Interesting times, these, for the never-dull Cornerstone Theater Company. ``Demeter in the City,'' the first production under the stewardship of new artistic director Michael John Garces (although it was developed during founding artistic director Bill Rauch's tenure) plays a short run at the Walt Disney Concert Hall's REDCAT space.

The production is visually arresting, flawed, but worth seeing. And any new work by playwright Sarah Ruhl (``The Clean House'') deserves notice.

Ruhl and director Shishir Kurup have set ``Demeter'' in present-day Compton, at UCLA and in places beyond. A 20-year-old drug-addicted mother named Demeter loses her infant daughter, Persephone, to the foster-care maze and nearly tears the city apart (literally) trying to reclaim her. Time passes, and a college-age Persephone strikes an unfortunate alliance with a member of the California Young Republicans and ends up in the most scalding of hot water.

This is, of course, a modern reworking of the Greek Demeter myth. Kurup and his performers give the tale plenty of music, attitude and a sense of social purpose. A bit too much of the latter, in fact, but we'll get back to that.

Against set designer Shigeru Yaji's backdrop of stark gray fencing and some canny use of side balconies, an 11-member female chorus tsk-tsks and sympathizes with the hardships of Demeter (Bahni Turpin), and the legal system that is swallowing her alive.

Miss D, as she refers to herself, is strong -- but not strong enough. An officious social worker comes in, cites the law and swoops Baby P. away. At a courtroom in Olympus, the judge (Peter Howard) upholds the law, giving Miss D 18 months to straighten up and fly right if she wants to get her child back.

It's in this first act that ``Demeter in the City'' tips its agenda's heavy hand. Foster-care stats are inserted liberally into the dialogue. The songs (written by Kurup and David Markowitz, with lyrics by Ruhl) are woeful and message-laden (the exception being a power-drunk number by Howard and the chorus titled ``A Judge's Piss.'') Turpin, a cauldron of innocence and powerless grief, anchors the proceedings quite nicely.

When Miss D's daughter grows up in the second act, the tone of ``Demeter'' shifts. Persephone (Sade More) is accomplished, emancipated, college bound and quite bitter at the system and the circumstances that have brought her to where she is. Then she falls in with a simultaneously charismatic and repugnant Young Republican (Sonny Valicenti) -- who the play takes some pains not to demonize -- and the natural order of the seasons is in for a roller-coaster ride.

Kurup and Ruhl do some artful twisting and turning to get their story to bend to the Demeter myth, but the tale's heart, humor and wonderment emerge largely intact. The reunion between Turpin's Demeter and Moore's Persephone has real poignancy, and Howard's reappearance (the judge has an alias) wraps things up most creatively.

And why shouldn't it? There's a lot of geography between Compton, Palm Springs and the Underworld. Leave it to Cornerstone to lay out the expanse and to do its level best to provide a creative bridge.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

[e-mail]

DEMETER IN THE CITY - Three stars

Where: Cornerstone Theater Company at Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT), 631 W. Second St., Los Angeles.

When: 8:30 tonight, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through Sunday.

Tickets: $20. [phone]. www.redcat.org

In a nutshell: Mothers, daughters, myths and goddesses. Welcome to L.A.

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Photo:

Sade More and Sonny Valicenti star in ``Demeter in the City,'' a Cornerstone Theater Company production at the REDCAT.