Chef

You can't say Jon Favreau lacks for chutzpah.

California Solo, Quartet

California Solo

Quartet

The one-man show "California Solo" stars Robert Carlyle as Lachlan MacAldonich, the guitar player in a fictional mid-'90s British grunge band called The Cranks whose debut album achieved critical acclaim before the lead singer, Lachlan's brother, died high on drugs in a Hollywood Hills car crash. These days, Lachlan works on an organic produce farm, drinks himself into oblivion most nights, and on weekends hawks his wares rather annoyingly at SoCal farmers' markets. When a DUI charge and a long-forgotten marijuana possession rap trigger INS removal proceedings, Lachlan has to find someone (a frequent customer who seems to prefer him to her boyfriend? the ex-wife or now-teenage daughter he hasn't seen in years?) for whom his deportation would pose an "extreme hardship." Slow, trite, and predictable, "California Solo" covers familiar ground uninterestingly - and Carlyle's hopeless as a vocalist.