STAGE REVIEW : Albee’s Joke on Sci-Fi Turns Into a Wry Look at Love

Even when Edward Albee is not at his best--and with “Seascape” his language and character dynamics feel wearied--his work is the result of a distinctive mind obsessively probing life’s recesses for meaning.

His writing consistently cajoles more questions to the surface than it seeks to answer, and because his dramas suggest that mystery is the design of things, they are perplexing by nature.

Even the basic confrontation of “Seascape,” at the Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana, is not simply two married couples facing off against each other.

One of the couples, for instance, is amphibious (the model for Karen J. Weller’s elaborately fun costumes and Gary Christensen’s makeup is the Creature From the Black Lagoon). Albee makes them a very benign and sensitive pair named Leslie and Sarah (Andy J. Pari and Amy Larson’s model appears to be the Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter roles in “Planet of the Apes”). This places Albee’s story securely in the tradition of humanistic science fiction, which tells us that all creatures are brothers and sisters under the skin.

The names are one of his funnier devices. In a sense, “Seascape” is an extended joke on the science-fiction genre: hapless people encounter alien creatures out of their element, but instead of the planet’s fate, the relationships may be in trouble.

The trouble, though, lies in “Seascape’s” dramaturgy, and Patricia L. Terry’s uneven production only illuminates the problems.

The primary one is the human couple, Nancy and Charlie (Karlene Bradley and Jack Thomas), two of the thinnest characters Albee has ever devised. The first act is theirs. For all Nancy’s impassioned pronouncements to start living life to the fullest and Charlie’s obviously troubled core, the psychological journey we take with them is surprisingly short and unfulfilling.

They are middle-aged with grown children and the usual amount of marital baggage, but so resiliently banal that when Albee adds touches of oddness to them, it feels mannered and false. Bradley and Thomas never once feel like they have put a family together (they are too young for the roles in any case), so when they spat, it is just a case of following the script.

Pari and Larson, conversely, really take us on a journey. Leslie and Sarah’s reptilian charm comes from their inquisitiveness (much of the second act is a wry, reworked mix of Platonic and Cartesian dialogues), plus their expression of loving each other without knowing what the word love means.

So when Sarah reveals that they have surfaced because the underwater life wasn’t enough for them, we realize to what extremes love has carried them.

Pari captures the predatory instinct beautifully (both men automatically show their fangs, so to speak), while Larson is pure maternal innocence. These are detailed performances, down to the amphibian head movements (Cyrus Parker was the movement director).

Verdict on the 61-seat Alternative Repertory Theatre? Too soon to tell. When a show matches such terrific costumes with a poorly designed set (David C. Palmer), it is a classic case of growing pains.

Before this, the theater staged Sartre (“No Exit”) and Pinter (“Betrayal”). Upcoming is Arthur Kopit’s “End of the World With Symposium to Follow.” Serious folks. South Coast Repertory, just a couple of miles away, started in a storefront too.

Performances are at 1636 S. Grand Ave., Santa Ana, on Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends May 22. Tickets: $10; (714) 836-7929.