THEATER REVIEW : ‘BEYOND THERAPY’ STILL OFFERS HEALTHY LAUGHS

“Beyond Therapy,” Christopher Durang’s satirical comedy at North Coast Repertory Theatre about analysts and their anxious single yuppie patients, is every bit as topical today as it was five years ago at its New York premiere.

The number of highly educated women over 30 who use psychotherapists “to make sense of their single status” has reached epidemic proportions, according to a report carried last month in The Times. Men, too, are snared in society’s shift in sexual roles as women delay marriage for careers.

“Beyond Therapy” hilariously sums up the plight of lonely Baby Boomers, trapped between the myths of the ideal marriage of their parents’ generation and a society changed by the impact of the so-called sexual revolution and feminism. Durang scores a direct hit on aging singles, those angst- ridden upwardly mobile urbanites whose major goal in life is to establish a “stable relationship”--read marriage. But he also skewers psychotherapy as zestfully as he satirized Catholic parochial education in his “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.”

At North Coast Repertory, director Ralph Joyce has assembled an able cast to play Durang’s lunatic menagerie of characters, driven to distraction by a miasma of sexual and social neuroses.

Psychotherapists Stuart Framingham (Rick Rinaldi) and Charlotte Wallace (Patti van Roode) are flaky beyond therapy. Framingham, who thinks he is God’s gift to women, has already botched one sexual fling with his patient, Prudence (Dee Dee Young), but doesn’t let that stop him from making more passes during her therapy sessions. Any time she questions his actions, he responds: “Just joking, just a joke, babe.”

Meanwhile, Wallace--she has her own hang-up, being married for a third time to a man named Wallace--talks earnestly to her life-size doggie puppet, Snoopy, during sessions with patients. For her patient, Bruce Lathrop (Bruce McKenzie), Wallace ghost writes personal want ads the way physicians dispense prescriptions. If an ad doesn’t attract the desired assignations, then Wallace writes another more appealing ad, like: 6-foot-3, white male, Pulitzer Prize winner, into Kierkegaard, Mahler and Joan Didion wants to meet. . . .

So what if the ad isn’t exactly the truth? It brings Prudence and Bruce together, again.

And what an unlikely couple. On their first date, Bruce, who tends to cry a lot, and Prudence, who wants someone strong to watch over her, exchange intimacies and pop psycho-babble they have learned from their therapists. Bruce, who is bisexual, is hardly Prudence’s ideal mate.

McKenzie embodies Bruce with the blind eye and ear of a man who already has made up his mind that he is going to marry--no matter whom. He unabashedly ogles Prudence, then impulsively tries to establish an instant relationship.

Prudence, who is not about to lower her standards, is as demanding a mate as Bruce is forgiving. Young plays her as emotionally and physically up-tight, mirroring the character’s fear over her diminishing chances of finding a mate.

Young does not always seem in touch with a scene. When Prudence throws water in Bruce’s face and bolts out of the restaurant, we don’t see it coming in her character’s reaction to Bruce.

Such two-character scenes are further handicapped by the pacing, which tends at times to drag.

Anyone looking for a funny, lightweight night in the theater should at least consider this North Coast production.

“BEYOND THERAPY”

A comedy by Christopher Durang. Directed by Ralph Joyce. Sets conceived by Joyce, Leslee Baren and the cast. Lighting, Ralph Joyce and Bill Stevenson. Costumes, Cathy Cooper. Stage manager, Marcia Filion. With Bruce McKenzie, Dee Dee Young, Rick Rinaldi, Patti van Roode, Bruce Seifert and Shawn McMillan. Performances at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays, through Jan. 11. No performances Dec. 25-Jan. 1. At North Coast Repertory Theatre, 971 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach.