By Les Spindle

Bad Hurt on Cedar Street

photo by Ed Krieger
Greenway Court Theatre
544 N. Fairfax Ave., Hollywood
Tuesday through Saturday 8 p.m.
Through Feb. 24
Tickets: $18-22
(323) 655-7679
www.greenwayarts.org

Semi-autobiographical dramas are a great tradition in American theater, having spawned masterworks from the likes of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill. At their best (O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Williams' The Glass Menagerie), they eloquently explore the author's bittersweet memories of family life, conjuring up moments of deep poignancy and resonant humor—hauntingly real images, filtered through the poetic vision of the writer's craft. Prolific local playwright Mark Kemble (Names, A Comfortable Truth: The Story of a Boy and His Priest) grapples with some obviously painful memories from his youth in Rhode Island in his dark and despairing new play, Bad Hurt on Cedar Street. There are fleeting moments of power in the premiere production, which clearly benefits from having the renowned actor-director Salome Jens at the helm, leading an exceptional cast. But the play unfortunately feels like a lopsided wallow in unrelenting misery. With few exceptions, we get a one-note journey into depressing reality—unleavened by sufficient grace notes or moments of gentle humor.

Though the press materials state that Kemble is writing about his family, the piece is set on Easter weekend in 2001. This suggests that he has taken certain artistic liberties. What we don't know is to what extent this is true, and it's not clear which character (if any) is based on Kemble. But that doesn't matter much. What one initially hopes for is that the piece will resonate with the emotional truths of Kemble's memories and life reflections. The story tells of the Irish-American Kendall clan in Cranston, R.I., where the strong-willed mother Elaine (Lisa Richards) has her hands full caring for her daughter Phoebe (Iris Gilad), retarded from birth, and her son Kent (Grant Sullivan), a basket-case drug addict, whose psyche and body remain damaged from his experiences as a soldier in the Gulf War. She also has to contend with her alcoholic husband Ed (Stephen Mendillo), an embittered Vietnam War vet. As if all of that wasn't enough, the mentally incapable Phoebe has fallen for a retarded boy, Willy (Laurence Cohen). Another brother, Todd (Jeff Cole), comes closest among the children to not seeming like a hopelessly lost cause. One or two more misfortunes, and we'd almost be in camp territory, or perhaps a sardonic modern-day parody of the Book of Job. Adding to the problems, there's too little narrative drive and a bit too much tedious slice-of-life meandering, which pretty much stymies Jens' attempts to work up some tonal variety and squeeze meaningful nuances out of the script's almost obsessively bleak trajectory.

Despite all of this, the performances are praiseworthy, particularly Richards' finely textured portrayal of an Earth Mother facing endless calamities with a stiff upper lip. Gilad is credible in her committed and touching depiction of an adult totally dependent on others. A nod is due to the remarkable two-level set by James Eric and Victoria Bellocq, a finely etched depiction of the family's crowded tenement domicile. Kemble is a writer with a wealth of solid work behind him. Perhaps with considerable rewriting, this could become the compelling personal drama he set out to write.

Defiance

Pasadena Playhouse
39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena
Tuesday through Friday 8 p.m.
Saturday 4 & 8 p.m., Sunday 2 & 7 p.m.
Through Feb. 18
Tickets: $40-60
(626) 356-7529
www.pasadenaplayhouse.org

In his Tony- and Pulitzer-winning play Doubt, veteran playwright John Patrick Shanley offered a provocative look at questions of morality, institutional authority and personal responsibility in a Catholic school, as a nun advances her unproven belief that a priest molested a young boy. In the West Coast premiere of Shanley's new play, Defiance, a followup to Doubt and the second part of a planned trilogy, the playwright again takes a look at powerful hierarchies in institutional America, focusing on moral confusion in the management ranks of the Marine Corps during the final phase of the Vietnam War. It's an earnest and occasionally stirring work that unfortunately gets bogged down in unwieldy intellectualizing, while neglecting the development of fully-fleshed out characters.

The production, handsomely and tautly staged by director Andrew J. Robinson, brought to mind a debate I often have with other theater or film fans/observers about the value of scrupulous acting in the face of problematic material. I maintain that the concept of “rising above the script” is a very rare occurrence. Separating the disciplines of “acting” and “dramaturgy”—as if one can easily flourish without support from the other—often seems far-fetched. Robinson has assembled a seasoned cast, with all giving committed and intense performances, striking up intermittent dramatic fireworks. But to what end? Shanley's attempts to dovetail his themes are unfocused, and his dialogue feels more like playwriting than credible speech. One often hears that actors should never be caught “acting.” The same sort of thought applies to playwriting. Shanley clearly has passion for the issues he raises here—racism, hypocrisy of those in command, the moral malaise of war and much more—but the plot is overstuffed with his under-ripe thematic conceits. The ways in which they are intended to inter-relate mostly remain unclear, and the climax of the play feels rushed and almost arbitrary.

The story is set in 1971 at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where racial tensions are arising between the whites and African Americans. The brusque and authoritative Col. Morgan Littlehead (Kevin Kilner)—the epitome of militaristic machismo—enlists the aid of black officer, Capt. Lee King (Robert Manning Jr.), to help deal with the problem. He's oblivious to the offensiveness of placing King in a token black context and he's shortsighted as to the complexity of the conflicts. The plot thickens with the revelation of a scandal involving Littlehead, some machinations on the part of a squirrelly chaplain (Leo Marks) and festering tensions between Littlefield and his wife (Jordan Baker). Baker's character comes closest to surmounting the dramaturgic morass, being a step removed from the convoluted power ploys, and Dennis Flanagan offers fine support as a private forced to endure a devastating emotional blow. John Iacovelli's ambient scenic design and Austin Switser's projected images of the wartime period lend some welcome authenticity and texture to the proceedings. One hopes that in the final trilogy installment, Shanley finds a better balance between exploring depths of moral complexity and telling an engrossing story.