Stage Review : ‘Vikings’

“Danes Are More Fun,” it says on the kitchen refrigerator.

Well, in the Grove Theater Company’s “Vikings” at the Gem Theater, the eldest of three Viking descendants delivers the rub from his dying Viking heart: Danes are adventurers but slow to feel passion and capable of their deepest love when they mourn.

The point is that these sentiments are carefully dramatized in the domestic, realistic side of this play about an American family of carpenters of Danish descent. A lightly used format known as presentational theater occasionally telescopes each of the three male characters in a future time frame from which they look back and murmur their truths and memories. It is an effective device, smoothly staged by Jules Aaron.

The family home (under Christa Bartels’ artful design), even looks like it was built by Danish carpenters. A nice touch. The play by Stephen Metcalfe is sort of Hamlet on the half shell. It’s about heritage, a warm tonal poem to three-generational ties.

Those generations are composed of a loving, oak-solid grandfather (Bert Conway), his widowed and troubled son (Daniel Bryan Cartmell) and the family’s real Viking lifeblood, a sun-drenched grandson who loves to mock his grandfather by citing the Vikings’ legacy of “rape and pillage.” A nurse and romantic interest to the middle-aged American Dane is blandly played by Sydell Weiner (and blandly written by Metcalfe).

Performances run at 12852 Main St., Garden Grove, Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sunday and Jan. 31, 7:30 p.m. Feb.7, 3 p.m.; Ends Feb. 13. Tickets: $12-$15. (714) 636-7213.