‘SHEBA’ DOES COME BACK--TO LATC

“Come Back, Little Sheba” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center feels like a 1950 Chevrolet being driven around the block for the first time in years. It handles very well, but there’s a reluctance to open ‘er up.

William Inge’s play briefly roared to life on Friday night when Doc (Charles Hallahan) came home plastered and took a good look at the woman he had been hitched to for 20 years (Tyne Daly). Hallahan’s howl as he decided that he couldn’t endure one more minute of this stupid cow’s conversation signaled real danger for Lola.

But the battle was over before it got started. Nor did Doc put up much of a fight when his pals from A.A. (Hoke Howell, Al Rossi) dragged him off to the alcoholic ward. Because all the fight was out of him? Or because someone feared that too much violence would overstrain the story?

The fear may be correct, but we’ll never know until “Sheba” is played at full force. The effect Friday was that of an affectionate revival, rather than a searching one. We enjoyed Hallahan’s Doc and Daly’s Lola, in the way that one enjoys relatives one doesn’t have to see too often. There was something quaint, almost cute, about them--his fussiness, her gullibility. It was nice that they worked out their problem.

But they were back there in the 1940s, not people whose lives applied in any way to ours. One can enjoy this “Sheba” without taking a moment of it to heart, and this may be all that director Ray Danton intends. But I do wish his actors would put the pedal to the floor, just to see what happens.

It’s a strong company. Daly is not interested in being compared with Shirley Booth. She doesn’t even try for charm. Her Lola may have been a cute trick years ago--she still does a serious Charleston--but it’s not likely that she ever had much of a line. Whatever she trapped Doc with, it’s gone now.

Still, there’s an honesty about her. When she goes out on the porch to call Sheba, she is calling for a real dog, not for her lost youth. And there are some feelings under there. This Lola is a klutz, but she is not a slob. Nor is she a congenital dreamer. It’s more as if she’s been in shock all these years, and it’s only now starting to clear away.

If not the definitive Lola--we still have to give Booth that--it’s a possible Lola. And Hallahan takes an interesting approach to Doc. Rather than playing him as a burnt-out case from the start, he suggests that Doc really thinks he’s got his drinking problem beat.

This adds interest to his downward course, and it adds irony to the happy ending--an irony not lost on Doc. What isn’t so clear is why he decides to get plastered.

It has a lot to do with his very complicated and rather guilty feelings for their star border, Marie (Jami Gertz). But Hallahan’s Doc sublimates these all too successfully. We don’t see what he sees when he looks at Marie, and why he’s so appalled to see her entertaining two boyfriends (Michael McGrady, Bradley White).

The intent here is not to be too obvious, but by reducing this part of the play to a kind of shorthand, the production leaves the audience a little in the dark as to what’s going on. It’s quite wonderful, though, in the final scene when we see that Doc’s drunkenness has, at last, succeeded in making Lola pay attention to him. How long will it last?

The production works most successfully as light drama, with comedy not far off (Lola’s sappy radio programs, her visits with the milkman and the mailman--Steven Barr, Robert Snively). What it lacks, but could still have with these actors, is terror.

It’s not funny, not a bit, when Doc comes home, and there shouldn’t be snickers, as there were Friday night.

In this vein, Daly’s finest moment was partly the work of scenic designer D. Martyn Bookwalter. Bookwalter has decided that Doc should keep his whiskey bottle, not in plain sight, but on a closet shelf. Daly wildly tears open the closet door even after she knows that the bottle is gone, on the chance that it will magically be back and everything will be all right again. That’s the play that Inge had in mind. ‘COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA’ William Inge’s play, at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Director Ray Danton. Set and lighting design D. Martyn Bookwalter. Costume design Shigeru Yaji. Sound design Jon Gottlieb. Stage manager Joan Toggenburger. Produced by Diane White. With Charles Hallahan, Jami Gertz, Tyne Daly, Michael McGrady, Robert Snively, Anne Gee Byrd, Steven Barr, David S. Franklin, Bradley White, Hoke Wowell, Al Rossi. Plays Tuesdays-Sundays at 8 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Closes May 31. Tickets $10.50-$25. 514 S. Spring St. (213) 627-5599.