THEATER REVIEW : ‘Women,’ in New Venue, Rings True

There is a hot and funny blind-date scene in the second act of John Patrick Shanley’s “Women of Manhattan,” that by itself is sufficient cause to check out this West Coast premiere at historic Old City Hall.

It is not the first time Shanley has paired lovers-to-be who seem, even to themselves, to be natural enemies, using pointed remarks as a way of prowling around each other’s boundaries, stepping over these boundaries just to see the other squeal. He did it in “Moonstruck.” He did it in the recently closed Bowery Theatre hit, “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.”

But it doesn’t get much better than in this scene between Judy (Anne Dauber), a long, winsome mixture of ideals and cynicism, and Duke (Charles T. Salter Jr.), a pipe-smoking enigma who also seems to live somewhere between fairy-tale fantasies and looking for Ms. Goodbar.

There is a lot to like in this initial offering by the 6-year-old Progressive Stage Company in its new, permanent home. This represents a new theater in downtown’s Gaslamp Quarter, with flexible seating and adjoining rehearsal space for the Progressive and for the growing number of San Diego theaters without permanent homes looking for places to rent for their own productions.

David V. Chandler, who is managing director and partner with Carlos X. Pena, producing director, said rehearsal space costs $25 for three hours and the price for producing on the stage is negotiable.

There is Shanley’s script about three upscale Manhattan women of 30--two single and one married--who are best friends. The married woman, Billie (Laurie Lehmann-Gray), is too puzzling in her discontent to strike any common chords--she has affairs because the perpetual honeymoon she and her husband are on is is too unexciting? But Judy, who desperately needs to be with a man, and Rhonda Louise (Mary Mansfield), who desperately needs not to be with one for a while, both ring true.

Although all of them are friends and all are lonely, one of the most salient points Shanley makes is that they all require different solutions and have different experiences. Even when two of them have an affair with the same man, the affairs are, qualitatively, different.

Director Claudia Weitsman elicits fine performances from the five-person ensemble. Dauber and Salter provide electricity, with Mansfield lending winning support as a confidante-confessor. As the married couple, Lehmann-Gray and J. Michael Ross as her husband, Bob, offer energy and style, but no insight into what Shanley was getting at in this portrait of unfulfilled yuppie married life.

Patti Grant’s set design works on the flat, cavernous stage without drawing attention to itself. Lighting designer Jim Blickensderfer has his hands tied with the primitive lighting equipment available to him, but he makes magic in the date scene as the lights fade to a candle glow, which is then blown out for a few breathless whispers in the shadowy dark.

The stage area has 42 seats--purchased from the old North Coast Repertory Theatre--that face the stage head on. Few more than a dozen were filled opening night. Pena said the seats are movable and future shows may be done in the round or half-round. With a little luck, and a few more warm, paying bodies in those seats, the Progressive is planning a season that includes the West Coast premieres of Thomas Babe’s “Billy Irish” in August, Jeffrey Sweet’s “The Value of Names” in October and, if it can get the rights, Shanley’s “Savage in Limbo” in March, 1989.

It will be a financial show-to-show struggle for the new theater, Pena said, but voiced confidence that the Progressive’s commitment to make a go of it will pull it through. Let’s hope so. “Women of Manhattan” is an auspicious beginning for a company. It should augur more good work.

“WOMEN OF MANHATTAN”

By John Patrick Shanley. Director is Claudia A. Weitsman. Sets by Patti Grant. Lighting by Jim Blickensderfer. With Laurie Lehmann-Gray, Mary Mansfield, Anne Dauber, J. Michael Ross and Charles T. Salter Jr. At 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 7 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 6. At Old City Hall, 433 G St., San Diego.