STAGE REVIEW : MA-AND-PA COMEDY HAS THE COURAGE TO BITE

“The Show-Off” at South Coast Repertory looks to be your standard resident-theater revival of a beloved American family comedy, but it cuts a lot deeper than that--and George Kelly’s play (1924) can take it.

At first we seem to be looking back with affection on the old family house in Philadelphia, in the mood of O’Neill’s ‘Ah, Wilderness.” There are Ma and Pa sitting in the dining room after supper, just the way they always did, Ma working on a sweater and Pa reading a story to her from the evening paper. Seems there was this fella. . . .

The fireplace, the lamps, the pressed-wood rocker, the piano music in the next room--it would bring tears to your eyes. Except that there’s a grim set to Ma’s mouth that you hadn’t remembered. And Pa seems really angry, not just put-out, that she can’t follow the newspaper story.

They don’t seem as contented as you remember. In fact, they almost seem, well, bitter.

Lee Shallat’s South Coast actors observe the almost as if it were a musical marking. They are aware that they are in a comedy. It’s funny , the Fisher family’s war against that awful young blowhard who wants to marry their Amy, that ridiculous Aubrey Piper. (“Sounds more like a place than a name,” sniffs Ma, one of the kinder things she has to say about him.)

But it’s a worried kind of funny. Take the ending, which is happy, as Kelly believed was right for a comedy. Aubrey (Ron Boussom) astounds everybody by doubling the family fortune with one of his typical whoppers, which usually explode in his face.

Hooray. But watch Nan Martin’s face as Ma. That’s not just a comical take, signalling exasperation at the thought that they’ll never hear the end of this from Aubrey. She truly smells disaster now that Aubrey has achieved some credibility in the family, and we are inclined to agree with her. With a son-in-law like this, you don’t need a stock-market crash.

When Helen Hayes played Ma at the Hartford years back, you felt that the Fishers would probably be all right. Here you’re not so sure. And that seems to be the reaction Kelly had in mind when this was a new play. Under the laughter, we sense his serious reservations, not just about Aubrey’s brand of pure American bull, but about the human species in general.

This isn’t a black comedy, but it’s certainly a realistic one. Kelly seems to agree with Ma that marriage and the family are a highly suspicious business. Certainly the Fishers don’t feel all warm and wonderful about each other, particularly Amy (Caitlin O’Heaney) and her married sister Clara (Kristen Lowman), who can’t be in the house two minutes without starting out on each other.

And Clara seems to share a very cold bed with her husband Frank, whom Steve DeNaut plays as a man with a burden he’s got too much honor to express. He may also have a mistress on the other side of town; it doesn’t help his spirits any.

For a funny show, we get an extraordinary sense of the cares of these people, a sign that Shallat’s actors have imagined them fully. One can see why a critic of the day found the play Chekovian, with its everyday surfaces and underlying anxieties, not least those about money. It is a subject that the Fishers take far more seriously than people in family comedies usually do--almost as seriously as a real family would.

The petty flareups just when they should be rallying together after Pa’s stroke (Hal Landon Sr. is Pa) also look familiar. Some period revivals leave you sighing for their time, when people were simpler and nicer. This one suggests that human intercourse has a certain amount of scratch built in.

Boussom is splendid as The Show-Off. It could be that he’s a tad too much the fantastick, but perhaps we’re meant to see him as the proper Fishers see him. Contrary to the program notes, he doesn’t get more likable as the evening progresses, and that’s a good choice. Sentiment is not the keynote of this revival.

Nan Martin is equally splendid --and unsentimental--as Ma. She’s too busy worrying about her family to pet them. She doesn’t even mind being cruel to them (especially the ditsy Amy) if it will wake them up. This is a serious parent, not a figure on a Mother’s Day card.

All the Fishers are convincing, down to Joe, who tinkers in the basement (Rafael Ferrer.) Kristen Lowman’s bored voice as Clara evoked the sadness of a woman with nothing in her life but shopping, but I was confused by her tone of voice with Aubrey when she tells him who’s boss in the last act. Surely she’s not thinking of seducing him? She couldn’t be that bored.

Mark Donnelly’s set, Shigeru Yaji’s costumes and Peter Maradudin’s lighting evoke a deceptively rose-colored picture of the Fisher home. The old place looks good in the family album, but do you really want to go back there?

‘THE SHOW-OFF’ George Kelly’s comedy, at South Coast Repertory. Director Lee Shallat. Setting Mark Donnelly. Costumes Shigeru Yaji. Lighting Peter Maradudin. Production manager Paul Hammond. Stage manager Julie Haber. With Kristen Lowman, Nan Martin, Caitlin O’Heaney, Steve DeNaut, Hal Landon Sr., Rafael Ferrer, Ron Boussom, Art Koustik, George Woods. Plays Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7:30, with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:30. Closes Feb. 10. Tickets $14-$20. 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. (714) 957-4033.