STAGE REVIEWS : 2 PLAYS FOR LAUGHTER, THOUGHT : ‘BENEFACTORS’

When you consider “Noises Off” (backstage mayhem), “Alphabetical Order” (a bureaucratic boondoggle) and “Wild Honey” (a Chekhovian Feydeau farce), you know their author, Michael Frayn, is a master of madcap modern satire.

It’s all the more surprising then to discover in Frayn’s “Benefactors,” satire of quite a different stripe. The comedy, which opened at the Old Globe over the weekend, astonishes us more by how serious it purports to be than by how weighty it finally is.

Serious in tone, that is. Almost . . . righteous--a serio-comic work with a handful of dead-earnest issues and analogies at its heart: housing redevelopment for the needy; generosity of spirit by the well-off (who presumably can afford it), and just where all that sort of thing gets you in the long run.

David and his wife Jane are the unsuspecting Samaritans who take their hapless neighbors, Colin and Sheila, under their wing. It’s easy--at first. David is a success and an optimist, an architect who has just been entrusted with the dream project of his life: tearing down a slum area and regenerating it with sunnily designed low-income units and gardens. Jane, his happy housewife, finds it satisfying to accommodate the needy Sheila’s dependence. But, oh, what a tangled web we wind when first we practice to be kind.

To help is fun, thinks Jane, or is it? Because with Sheila comes Colin, a model of cynical discontent. He’s that dreaded combination: an unprincipled bully turned journalist, with barbs for everyone, especially his handiest target, drab little Sheila. When Jane gamely helps Sheila acquire some backbone by suggesting she become David’s secretary, the worm turns.

It works out only too well, alas. Sheila acquires skills and self-confidence as David’s project sinks deeper into political mire. Jane moves into a harassing job of her own (in a contrapuntal field: the newly-fashionable rehabilitation of housing) and Colin, to everyone’s peril, is left out in the cold.

The balance of power has begun to shift as subtly as public opinion surrounding David’s redevelopment scheme. When Colin leaks to the press, a confidence of Sheila’s about that scheme, it lights the fuse that irrevocably torches their lives.

Frayn’s writing bristles with articulation--some might say overarticulation--and the consciousness is one of architectural stress: carefully structured character buttressing and situational juxtapositions, seismically reinforced by monologues to the audience from each of the four protagonists.

Set, costumes and lights (by Fred M. Duer, Christine Haatainen and Wendy Heffner, respectively) are simple but effective. Director Thomas Bullard keeps up a swift pace and handles the abundance of language by never letting his characters off the hook or the stage. He is staunchly supported by a cast skillful at altering its colors.

James R. Winker is an expansive and charismatic David, generous to the end, and Sally Smythe is sensual and pragmatic as his wife Jane, though clouds collect in her performance as the storm gathers. Vyto Ruginis is “all cold and dark brown” as the unrelenting Colin, but also clear and almost redeemable as we learn to understand what makes him tick. Most deceptive and able of all is Pippa Pearthree as the mousy Sheila, a monster of well-meaning parasitism.

“Benefactors” is a modern morality play--a mildly challenging cerebral exercise, a bit too stifling and artificially blueprinted to become a full-fledged emotional experience. Fun for those who like that sort of thing, too dense and daunting for those who don’t.