Capsule Reviews

 Castro's Beard If not for the investigative reporting of the Washington Post's Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson in 1967, we never would have known about the spy-vs.-spy internal workings of the CIA during the mess that came to be known as the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba -- or the U.S. government's subsequent wacky plots to kill Castro. English playwright Brian Stewart telescopes history to a single 1960 day inside headquarters at Langley, Virginia, just as "Operation Mongoose" is set in motion. The play's group of four CIA agents calls their destabilization operation "Ortsac," but it's immediately pointed out by everyone how easy that acronym is to decipher. This satire is a Looney Tunes version of the truth, but based on facts that turned out to be more ridiculous and deadly than anyone would have thought. Bumbling and inept, the plots devised by these CIA Keystone Kops include dusting Castro's boots with thallium salts, which would cause his beard to fall out, staging the return of Jesus -- and thus Christianity -- into Havana harbor, planting an exploding seashell, and downing a commercial airplane full of disadvantaged children in order to stir hatred against Castro, among other dopey ideas. It's chilling -- and sadly hilarious -- that the best and the brightest wasted our country's espionage resources on such dubious work. (And the 9/11 Commission Report is sad testament that nothing much has changed.) Stewart attempts to thicken his one-note play with an abrupt tone change in Act II, when dopiness gives way to dialogues about ethics. So fervently espoused, the political platitudes and sticky morality come from another play and throw the satire into territory it doesn't want to visit. Even so, the production is slick, the actors credible and sincere, and the truth -- as always -- stranger than fiction. Through October 24 at Stages Repertory Theatre, 3201 Allen Parkway, 713-527-0123.

The Exonerated Shadowy, dark and brutally haunting, the Alley Theatre's mesmerizing production of The Exonerated is everything live theater should be. Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's script comes from interviews and legal papers that have been artfully shaped into a docudrama. The play weaves together the narratives of six true-life victims of the judicial system. Rob Bundy's understated direction puts his quietly raging cast on an empty, dark stage backed only by concertina wire. There they tell their stories of years spent on death row. The powerful cast includes Alley favorites K. Todd Freeman and David Rainey. But the most disturbing stories come from Annalee Jefferies's Sunny Jacobs, who spent 17 years in prison for a double murder she didn't commit. Jefferies takes to the stage in a state of almost angelic calm to tell Jacobs's story of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also heartbreaking is Philip Lehl as Kerry Max Cook, who spent two decades in a Texas prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence and released. Because it was said that he was homosexual during his trial, he was sodomized and brutalized in prison. Texas has been responsible for almost a third of the people put to death in the United States since the late '70s. Of the 451 people on death row in Texas, 161 are from Harris County alone. The Exonerated has gotten rave reviews across the nation, from California to New York, but in no place are these stories of a broken judicial system more meaningful or devastating than right here at home. Through October 31. 615 Texas Avenue, 713-228-8421.