STAGE REVIEW : ‘STRANGE SNOW’ HITS HOME AGAIN

Stephen Metcalfe’s 1982 play, “Strange Snow,” is enjoying its fourth San Diego run in three years.

Thanks to a skilled and immensely likable production by the East County Performing Arts Center, playing through March 15, it has not worn out its welcome.

It’s easy to see why this show appeals to theaters from the Old Globe to the San Diego State University Theatre. It’s a well-made drama about three people who have suffered and need each other if they are to fully recover. And it manages to be funny at the same time.

Dave, a Vietnam War veteran, and his sister, Martha, share a house together. The house is cozy, but the ambiance is grim: Dave, once a high school sports hero, is now an embittered alcoholic who drives a truck for a living, and Martha is a lonely schoolteacher who tends to him without appreciation on his part, or pleasure on hers.

Enter Megs, an old Vietnam buddy of Dave’s, who bangs on their door before dawn one morning and wakes them up literally and, ultimately, figuratively.

Megs has an ostensible reason for his visit: He has come to take Dave fishing. He also has a hidden agenda. He knows his buddy is suffering from the war, just as surely as if he were struggling in the battle beside him and needs Megs to pull him to safety. In addition, by seeing the beauty in Martha and appreciating her very different, but no less painful, fight, he is a breath of life to her, too.

The success of the play depends on a Megs whose high-spirited determination is enough to melt the snow that has frozen these two. It is a strange snow, because it is lingering well past the season. He has got to be irresistible--part “Rainmaker,” part “Music Man” and part “Elmer Gantry”--but unlike those con men, the thing he is selling is truth, and it is something he has purchased at the cost of a pain that at one time had also driven him to the brink.

Michael Keys Hall delivers all this and more as Megs. Adrienne Barbeau (best known for her part as Carol on TV’s “Maude”) is billed as the star, and she turns in a solid performance as the woman determined to take her last chance and run with it. But it is unquestionably Hall’s show. He doesn’t just say his lines, they spring from him, dancing and prancing. And when the light changes, the shadows show. His Megs has a past and he has a reason for his mission, a debt to repay. All that comes out seamlessly, like another physical feature revealed, rather than as a stitched-in attitude. Hall is that rarest of actors--you can never actually catch him working.

James Horan as David has the thankless role of the man who is drowning and dragging his sister down with him. He’s vigorous and has the angry surface of his character in hand, but he doesn’t quite convey the depth of feeling that would arouse the needed sympathy. His best moments are with Barbeau who, in turn, is at her best when she stands up to him. But from the beginning there is so much more will than timidity in her, that it takes a bit of a swallow to believe that her Martha could have been kept down for as long as she has.

Glenn Casale’s direction keeps the pace crackling. He delivers the laughs without sacrificing the feeling. Karma Lobsinger’s costumes are generally appropriate, but her hair design is downright touching in the scene where Megs shows up with slicked-back locks for his very first dinner date with Martha.

The lighting by Raun Yankovich takes us from dawn to sunset nicely; if he can straighten out the one missed cue that revealed a stage hand behind the scenes, he’ll be just fine.

Joanne McMaster’s set is a charmingly detailed re-creation of a comfortable middle-class household, complete with copper animal molds on the wall and a well-stocked pantry. It is curious, though, that a woman like Martha, who takes pride in making her own soup, has such a plentiful supply of Progresso and Campbell soup cans. Is there a sinister subplot here? Is she telling Megs the truth about her culinary skills?

But this is a nit of a nit. The show is a pleasure and there’s nothing strange about why it works. A good script and good performances well put together will do it every time. “STRANGE SNOW”

By Stephen Metcalfe. Director is Glenn Casale. Costumes by Karma Lobsinger. Sound by Chuck McCarroll. Lighting by Raun Yankovich. Sets by Joanne McMaster. Stage manager is Scott Rogers. With Adrienne Barbeau, Michael Keys Hall and James Horan. At 8 p.m. through Saturday and 7:30 Sunday, with Saturday--Sunday matinees at 2:30. Closes March 15. At the East County Performing Arts Center, 210 E. Main St., El Cajon.