STAGE REVIEWS : BOTH PERFORMERS SHINE IN ‘SALT-WATER MOON’

“Jacob has returned from a year away. Now, he wishes to rekindle the romance he abandoned, and win back Mary’s love. She has since become engaged to another.”

Don’t look for complications in David French’s “Salt-Water Moon” at South Coast Repertory’s Second Stage. This is one of those wooing plays, a Newfoundland version of “Talley’s Folly.” Will Jacob (Marc Epstein) get Mary (Juliana Donald) to forgive him for having left her on the mountain that night? Given Jacob’s way with words, we are quite confident that he will.

How will he do it, though? Partly by bravado--as if to demonstrate that life with him will be a lot more amusing than life with that prig she is promised to--and partly by romantic blarney, not that he doesn’t mean it. (It’s 1926, and these are two very sincere youngsters.)

But Jacob’s major effort is to remind Mary that they are sprung from the same kind of people--as opposed, once more, to her intended. This involves the recounting of more family and national history than is comfortable in a play with so little forward motion. An overloaded dory can’t have the grace of a canoe.

“Salt-Water Moon” makes port, though. The ending is the one that we were hoping for, the one that nature intended. Possibly we would see Jacob and Mary’s courtship in a more poignant light if we knew the plays that follow in French’s Newfoundland cycle (“Leaving Home” and “Of the Fields, Lately”), but these haven’t been produced here yet. This one can stand on its own.

Martin Benson’s actors do very well with it, avoiding quaintness (a problem with this text), but making it clear that these are two youngsters of another time and place.

Actress Donald, for instance, suggests that Mary doesn’t necessarily expect to be happy in marriage; happiness isn’t what life is about. That makes her harder to win than a young woman who puts her feelings first. Mary can’t just be swept off her feet. She has got to be persuaded. Epstein makes Jacob charming, but not just that. You sense his worth as well, and the fact that he’s not as confident as he seems. He’s aware that he may well have blown his chance with this very serious young woman. Yet he goes into the fray with a certain gaiety. Epstein also speaks the text uncommonly well. It would be interesting to see him in a classical role.

The physical production is as bare as a winter beach, with mackerel colors predominating in Peter Maradudin’s lighting scheme--whites, grays, blues. Michael Devine’s setting suggests one of Hopper’s Cape Cod village paintings; Sylvia Moss’ costumes suggest a town where one cares very much what the neighbors think. “Salt-Water Moon” has nothing unconventional to say, but it knows its craft.

It’s a different story with Anthony Fallon’s “Babe’s All-Nite Cafe” at the Megaw Theatre. This concerns an old Broadway performer named Babe (Naomi Stevens) whose diner is about to be torn down. Babe holes herself up inside, serving invisible coffee to invisible customers and belting out dreadful original songs by Fallon.

It’s not clear whether we’re supposed to find Babe essentially saner than the outside world, in which case her final capitulation to the city is a defeat; or whether we are supposed to see her as bonkers, in which case the last scene shows her returning to the land of the living.

What function the other characters in the play serve is also something of a mystery--Bill Erwin as a local street person and Ellen Crawford as a social worker. Crawford’s scenes after she gets handcuffed to a coffee maker are incredibly awkward. Elaine Moe was the director, and Richard Rorke and Rick Felkins did the set, which is quite accomplished. It plays through April 14 at 17601 Saticoy St., Northridge. (818) 881-8166.

‘SALT-WATER MOON’ David French’s play, at South Coast Repertory’s Second Stage. Director Martin Benson. Setting Michael Devine. Costumes Sylvie Moss. Lighting Peter Maradudin. Production manager Paul Hammond. Stage manager Andy Tighe. With Juliana Donald and Marc Epstein. Plays Tuesday-Saturday at 8:30 p.m., Sunday at 8, with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3. Closes April 7. Tickets $15-$18. 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. (714) 957-4033.