STAGE REVIEW : Overdose of Reality in ‘V & V Only’

It’s easy to spot the impulse behind Jim Leonard’s “V & V Only,” which opened at South Coast Repertory’s Second Stage over the weekend. This slice-of-life look at the Asian immigrant incursion into New York’s Little Italy is about the new order displacing the old, fatally fracturing an already crumbling Italian infrastructure. Not a bad idea for a play, but Leonard has gone about it with two left feet.

He has opted for a “Time of Your Life” approach, concentrating heavily on detailing the languishing boredom of a small Italian hangout (in this case, Vito’s V & V take-out coffee shop), at the expense of just about everything. So intent was he on giving us the reality of the place that he forgot that it rarely translates into dramatic authenticity. Theater is not reality. It is an imitation of life--preferably skillful.

We’re invited to meet the denizens of V & V’s, owned by the ailing Vito (Dick Boccelli) and visited mostly by the tenants in the building above: Antonio (Allan Arbus), who comes with his cocker spaniel and plays a lot of solitaire; Raffiella (Tresa Hughes), a motherly type always complaining about her daughter; Nick (Erich Anderson), the youngish handyman, a layabout with a gambling streak; his girlfriend, Janey (Roxann Biggs), who knows Nick for the shiftless bum he is but cares enough to stay.

There is also young Tommy (Robert Minicucci), a willing if not always able kid whom Vito is faithlessly training to replace him, mainly because they’re related. And the talkative cop on the beat, Donny (Brian Tarantina). In this laid-back atmosphere comes news that the building has been sold and will be turned into co-ops.

If the change disturbs these tenants, Leonard’s treatment so lacks tension that we don’t sense it much before Act II. By then, what is done about it seems entirely disproportionate to the initial reaction and is carried out by the one character who would have been the least affected by the change. To reveal more is to betray the play’s single item of real action.

There is potential in this plot, but Leonard, for all his effort at ambiance, has not delivered believable characters. It is as though a crucial part of their brain were missing. They wallow in triteness and deadly small talk, all of which sounds borrowed from other mouths. One scene rarely progresses organically to the next, and the play ends on a note of improbable chitchat that simply is not the outgrowth of the action that has gone before.

One could fault director Marshall W. Mason for the halting pace, but more so for failing to recognize that it could hardly have been otherwise. The characters aren’t there, aren’t true, and the actors aren’t comfortable inhabiting them.

This may connect to a curious problem that emerges in Act II. Leonard has his characters so scared and incensed about the change of landlord that it brings out the worst in them--bigotries not voiced earlier explode full-blown, with racial epithets flying around the room like berserk Ping-Pong balls. There is little doubt such bigotries are real, but when people start such ugly talk, whatever affection you might have mustered for them quickly fades.

John Lee Beatty has created a neat, compact set, well-lit by Tom Ruzika. Costumes by Susan Denison Geller are appropriate, but a good deal more thought, development and refining needs to happen before “V & V” can be considered a finished play. Plans to take this production to New York’s Circle Repertory Theatre (which co-produced and of which Mason is the former artistic director), are a dreadful idea. “V & V” doesn’t need more exposure. It needs work.

Performances at 655 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa run Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 8 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2, through April 17. Tickets: $19-$24; (714) 957-4033.