STAGE REVIEW : GOOD FIGHT ON HAND IN ‘WRESTLERS’

Bill C. Davis’ “Wrestlers” at the Cast theater is a deliciously simple little play with three engaging characters locked in an age-old dilemma: two men in love with the same woman.

No, it’s not “Design for Living” and it’s not “Key Exchange,” though there’s the flavor of each in this lean, resilient piece. What complicates the plot here is that the men are brothers--not just siblings, but true-blue rivals who have to wrestle each other to the ground in every aspect of their lives.

The “Mother-loves-you-best” syndrome starts it (as Davis implies in some of the early scenes), but the tug swiftly escalates to an aggressive relationship honed by, and dependent on, its very competitiveness. In the end, the uncommon surprise is that these young men, who have fed freely and sometimes ferociously on each other, become nurtured and made whole by the very consumption.

It’s a complex idea belied by the structural simplicity of its form and, at the Cast, enhanced by the plain pine set (Larry Fulton designed) on which it takes place.

However, this menage a trois is no forum for rapier wit, but for a deeply American, almost corny exchange, so vibrant and playful that it expertly disguises the comedy’s darker lining and more delicate themes: How genetics and other biology never leave us and how, if we are truly to blossom, we had better embrace them and--ultimately--embrace one another.

Monty (performed by the lithe and nimble-witted author Davis) is the spokesman for the group, obliquely presenting his plight as a young innocent taunted and often daunted by older brother Bobby (Mark Harmon, alternately winning, sheepish and sly).

Monty grows up to fall in love and to live with a perfectly ordinary nice young woman named Angie (Gina Hecht), who comes equipped with the play’s only lapse into banality: a dedicated telephone mother who’s good for a few very traditional laughs. The rivalry with Bobby only resumes when Monty and Angie, who live in the country, invite the thoroughly depressed Bobby, who lives in the city, to join them for a weekend.

What happens next is enormously skillful--a lighthearted version of the personality exchange found in Sam Shepard’s “True West,” with Angie the new focus of the brothers’ contention. They subtly vie for her attention, with Bobby finally moving in downstairs--and Monty out to the city.

In the end, “Wrestlers” runs quite a bit deeper than its surface shenanigans imply. This is a play that thrives on its aphoristic approach. The tighter the better and, at almost two hours without intermission, it’s 15 minutes too long.

A good place to shear is in the final third, after Monty’s ritual withdrawal, when some of the dialectics touch repeatedly on the obvious, delaying the far more intriguing emotional twists of the very end. At a trim 90 minutes, “Wrestlers” would be an upbeat gem of a play.

Ilya Mindlin created the appropriately warm, unsubtle lighting and Pauline Lecrass the casual costuming. Davis (who also wrote and performed in his enormously popular “Mass Appeal”) is well served by director Glenn Casale, who has applied alacrity and a very light hand to the finely crafted proceedings. The lively cast of three can take the rest of the credit.

Performances at 804 N. El Centro Ave. in Hollywood run Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 and 7 p.m., until Sept. 22--longer if we get lucky. (213) 462-0265.