Poor Lydia (Nicole Monet). Imagine the mortification of this sex-obsessed 14-year-old at being dragged to swing (as in dance) camp with her parents Jill (Liv Kellgren) and Dog (Craig Huisenga). Eww. All her whining – even outright refusal – can’t budge them. Could anything be worse?

You’d think not, the way Lydia continues to mope, complain, make snide comments and accuse her parents of impending divorce (hotly denied each time). She even glowers at the sight of a pair of dancers named Lead (Ernest T. Dela Cruz) and Follow (Jamie Lloyd), who glide across the stage from time to time.

But to the strains of Ella Fitzgerald and the Big Bands, Lydia will eventually fall – both “in love” and off a wall, while others fall into each other’s arms and out of balloons. The falling metaphor – and the actuality – get quite a workout.

Coincidence and fantasy, parental failure and teen angst meet in Bridget Carpenter’s Fall, presented by Moxie Theatre on the Diversionary Theatre stage through July 16, directed by Jennifer Eve Thorn.

The play starts out well enough (though you have to accept the unlikely premise that Jill and Dog, both teachers, skip out on the beginning of the semester for dance camp). Lydia is bright, clever, at times even witty, her parents well-meaning. Lydia’s life revolves (at least verbally) around sex and scuba diving. She really does take scuba lessons; sex she hears about from a particularly big-mouthed classmate who incessantly describes the four (or was it 14?) sexual encounters she’s had. Though it isn’t difficult to figure out where the “I-hate-dance” attitude will wind up, early action is promising.

Then everything grinds to a halt and starts repeating itself, and by the end of act one Lydia is still kvetching, Jill and Dog continue to dance (Dog’s real name is Doug “but nobody calls him that”) and the “fall” metaphors begin to pile up in interactions with the other two characters: camp teacher Gopal (Brandon Walker), whose parents left India and opened a dance camp, and Jack Gonzales (Robert Kirk), friend of Jill and Dog who has come to camp without his wife.

In the second act, Fall moves into surreal territory. Lydia, Jack and Gopal do a sort of scuba ballet (she’s found a scuba teacher in the environs); Lydia dances blindfolded with Gopal and then Jack; and an apparent dream sequence has Jack alternately in love with Jill, Dog and Lydia.

The turn of the play is a little like scenic designer Mia Bane Jacobs’ set: on stage right, a long white screen allowing for lovely effects as dancers perform behind it, and on stage left, two levels of wall whose location and purpose are unclear.

Carpenter (who won the 2000 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for this play), knows her swing dancing (she’s a self-described “Lindy fiend”), but manages to make only the dancing seem real.

Don’t blame the cast. Monet, a great talent, is hampered by an essentially one-note role. Kellgren does what she can with an unsympathetic part, as does Huisenga. Walker and Kirk breathe as much life as can be found into their parts.

But a kvetchy kid with teen angst and a big mouth wears out her welcome in fairly short order, and by the time we got to the predictable ending, I no longer cared.

Moxie Theatre’s Fall plays through July 16 at Diversionary Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m., with a Sunday matinee at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (760) 634-3965 or visit www.moxietheatre.com.

“Writers can’t write as fast as governments can whip up wars.”

- Bertolt Brecht

Mother Courage (Ivonne Coll) is a war profiteer. On a small scale, to be sure, she makes her living selling items to soldiers from a cart she and her three children push close to military encampments. She sells shirts, sausages, brandy, shoes – basic items that soldiers need, or want. This business has supported her for years because, as the Chaplain (Patrick Kerr) puts it: “War is like love. It finds a way.”

La Jolla Playhouse, in cooperation with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, presents

playwright David Hare’s adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children at La Jolla Playhouse’s Forum Theatre through July 23, directed by Lisa Peterson.

Mother Courage is a strong, in-your-face character, not the least bit likable but perhaps admirable for her chutzpah. She will sell anything she can get her hands on, but drives a hard bargain. She has two sons of army age – Eilif (Scott Drummond) and Swiss Cheese (Ryan Shams) – and a mute daughter, Kattrin (Hilary Ward).

Among the other characters she bumps into are the whore Yvette Pottier (Katie Barrett), the army Cook (James Eckhouse), the Sergeant (Brent Hinkley), the Recruiting Officer (Marc Damon Johnson) and assorted other soldiers.

This is not your everyday play. Written in 1939 in response to Hitler’s march through Poland, Mother Courage is anti-war, anti-capitalist and thick with political comment.

Brecht’s dramatic theory, revolutionary in its time, involved “Verfremdungseffekt” (the alienation effect) – distancing the viewer from the characters. Brecht had no interest in telling a nice story with characters the audience could get involved with; he wanted the audience to be jolted out of the story in order to consider – even to question – the message. He thought plays should be set in a definite time period, preferably not the present. Mother Courage is set in the 17th century, during the Thirty Years War – a pointless war if ever there was one, but modern parallels are not difficult to find.

This play is about materialism gone amok (which, Brecht believed, leads to war). It’s about betrayal and survival and doing the right thing, the wrong thing and what you have to do. That may sound grim, but Peterson plays up the comic aspects, resulting in a long but entertaining and thought-provoking evening.

Each of the 12 scenes in the play contains a song, to which Gina Leishman’s wonderfully evocative, Kurt Weill-like music, adds exactly the right touch. Two fine instrumentalists (Mark Danisovszky and Jonathan Piper) contribute accompaniment on piano, accordion and tuba.

Peterson has assembled a terrific design team to present this classic play. Rachel Hauck’s brilliant scenic design offers a giant blackboard as back wall, on which ensemble members on a moving ladder write slogans, dates, place names and song titles. Lines are strung at odd angles, which allow for simple “curtains” to be drawn. And the centerpiece – Mother Courage’s cart – has been updated to a red Jeep, tarted up for use as a rolling store. David Zinn’s costumes are great.

The cast is outstanding. Ivonne Coll’s cynical and hard-hearted Mother Courage is unforgettable, as is Barrett’s joyously over-the-top Yvette. Kerr does a splendid turn as the Chaplain. Eckhouse is fine as the Cook.

Mother Courage is political theater with a message for today. La Jolla Playhouse has done justice to this great classic.

Mother Courage plays through July 23 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Forum Theatre. Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 7:00 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (858) 550-1010 or visit www.lajollaplayhouse.com.

Writers and teachers are a strange lot. Committed loner Ruth Steiner (Kandis Chappell), who never answers the phone and owns neither answering machine nor computer, is an established short story writer and teacher. She is both amused and annoyed by the visit of dewy-eyed young writing student Lisa Morrison (Amanda Sitton), awed by fame and wanting an opinion on her latest effort.

“Being here, studying with you, is like a religious experience for me,” Lisa says.

This first meeting is a bit prickly. While Ruth is in the kitchen making tea, Lisa surveys Ruth’s bookshelf; selecting one, she finds a letter from poet Delmore Schwartz inside. Lisa’s breathless question brings a stern rebuke from Ruth and a demand to put it back.

When Ruth tries to read her story, the nervous youngster talks compulsively. Eventually Ruth pronounces Lisa talented, Lisa becomes Ruth’s assistant and they begin to settle into a working relationship.

As time goes by – the play covers a six-year period in the early ’90s – Lisa becomes more self-assured, and the two move from teacher and student to colleagues. There is much talk about writing and truth, a writer’s inspiration and responsibility. A discussion of celebrity behavior (Woody Allen and Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi are in the news) provokes outrage from Lisa and tolerance from Ruth, who says of movie stars, “That’s why we invented them – so they could act out for all of us.”

When Lisa’s first collection of stories is published and she is hailed as the voice of a generation, the relationship begins to fray. But in a weak moment (or perhaps feeling bad about her unacknowledged jealousy), Ruth tells Lisa about a long-ago affair with Schwartz.

Lisa uses this as the basis for her first novel, part of which we hear as she does a reading. Ruth explodes with anger at what she regards as Lisa’s betrayal.

“He’s mine, not yours,” she sputters. “I feel liked I’ve been bugged. My dear young friend turned out to be a spy. A spy who sold my secrets.”

Lisa sees the use of Ruth’s story as a tribute: “I thought you’d feel… pride… satisfaction… for having been a good teacher.”

There is no negotiating this difference, and the relationship ends in calumny, leaving the audience to debate the unanswered question: Who owns a story?

The inspiration for Collected Stories was a dispute between poet Stephen Spender and novelist David Leavitt, who used the poet’s memoir as the basis of his novel While England Sleeps. That argument landed in court, where Spender succeeded in getting Leavitt’s book suppressed.

Kandis Chappell originated the role of Ruth at South Coast Repertory Theatre in 1996. It moved to New York in 1997; that year the play received a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

Now, a decade later, Chappell inhabits the role like a favorite shirt. She ages visibly, gets crankier and angrier – and lonelier. Sitton, an upcoming star in her own right, is a perfect Lisa, moving from puppy-dog devotion to self-assured writer before our eyes. This isn’t acting; it’s life.

David Ellenstein’s direction lets it breathe; Marty Burnett’s fabulously homey set and Jeanne Reith’s costumes are just right.

Collected Stories is about growing up and growing old, friendship and betrayal, and this fickle taskmistress that is the writing muse. Margulies has fashioned a play with characters so familiar that we feel we’re observing real life. It’s a rare opportunity.

Collected Stories runs through July 30 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m., with select Saturday matinees at 2:00 p.m. and select Wednesday evenings at 7:00 p.m. For tickets, call (888) 776-6278 or (858) 481-1055, or visit www.northcoastrep.org.