STAGE REVIEW : ‘THE POTSDAM QUARTET’ OUT OF TUNE

What if you were a playwright, and your setting was the Potsdam Conference at the end of World War II in Europe, where the Allied leaders divided up the conquered German spoils and set in motion the dropping of the Bomb? What would be the action of your drama? Who would be your main characters?

From the early moments of “The Potsdam Quartet,” at the West Coast Ensemble, we sense an enormous impishness huddling within playwright David Pinner. He knows what we’d expect from such a setting, and he stubbornly gives us just what we wouldn’t expect: a bubbling, then boiling struggle among the four clashing personalities of a string quartet, performing for the heads of state.

Surprise is the elixir of good drama, and to look upon the profound geopolitical changes that Potsdam wrought from the artist’s metaphorical angle--those who played to the heaviest of political players--could be the makings of a great play.

Pinner’s is not it. In fact, once first violinist Aaron (Terry Gordon), cellist Douglas (Peter Fitzpatrick), violist Ronald (Gary Pannullo) and second violinist John (Dane M. Ince) settle down in the break room where the play occurs, it’s clear that the playwright isn’t up to his own ambitious assignment. Instead, the quartet’s petty squabblings rule the day.

There are the allusions to Churchill (whom Aaron, the Union Jack patriot, rather fancies), “that socialist Attlee,” who took over as prime minister during the conference, Stalin (whom Douglas unashamedly admires) and to Truman’s piano playing. But they’re passing mentions to offstage figures, and the most profound political connective to Pinner’s characters’ problems is when Aaron utters his reverence for the glory of the peace talks--if they can do it, why can’t we?

You feel that any second John, a dark, embittered cynic, will come back with some rejoinder about how all peace talks are just preparations for the next war. Nothing so high-minded here. John, instead, seems obsessed with destroying the quartet for no better reasons than that Aaron neglects his struggling musician son and that John and Ronald have had a botched romance. Toss in for good measure that Douglas has Parkinson’s Disease (of which Douglas, for no clear reason, was ignorant).

It’s as if a drama about the signing of the Magna Carta focused instead on King John’s queen and her ingrown toenails. This might work if the queen were utterly engrossing. Pinner’s quartet strikes us as pompous or whimpering fools, and rarely as artists. Only very late does Aaron launch into an aria on art and beauty and the musician. It is more of a mild coda than a ferocious climax.

Frank Coppola directs with a steady, uninspired hand, contained by the very nature of the text from pushing it down any surprising paths. Outside of Fitzpatrick losing his Scottish accent from time to time, the cast is intelligently focused. Ince finds a heart of coldness within John, and Douglas Langdale comes off with comically wooden authority as a Russian soldier.

Perhaps in keeping with Pinner’s woefully incomplete dramaturgy, Nick Dorr failed to add a wall (he cheats with a black curtain, instead) on his otherwise finely detailed manorial set.

Karen Tarleton and Cindy Jay’s very correct costumes add a touch of surprise in the show’s first moments--are these soldiers, or musicians?

Performances at 6240 Hollywood Blvd. run Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., until Dec. 14 ((213) 871-1052).