STAGE REVIEW : Raw Power Fuels Norman’s ‘Getting Out’

Much of the publicity surrounding “Getting Out,” which opened over the weekend at the Burbage Theatre, has concentrated on the fact that singer-songwriter Carole King is in it. She is, and she plays Ruby, an ex-convict who befriends Arline, our protagonist, only just released from prison.

What the publicity couldn’t tell us was just how good the balance of this Neon Art production would be--so good that it demonstrates the enormous power that lurks in this first play by Marsha Norman (who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for “ ‘night, Mother”) and reminds us of why she took the world by storm with it when it was initially staged in Louisville.

In terms of its acting talent, its direction (by Joel Asher) and its design, it is a cut substantially above most Equity Waiver shows. J. Kent Inasy’s lighting and Scott Storey’s tight combination of catwalk, prison cell and that filthy cell of an apartment Arline is released into create a precise ambiance.

Asher does not compromise. He gives us the play as Norman wrote it: raw. The mature Arline (Pamela Harris), facing life on the outside, has to contend with all sorts of vultures: Bennie (Jeff Doucette), an oafish guard who’s taken a shine to her and drives her to freedom--with strings attached; Carl (Michael Arabian), a former lover and pimp strung out on dope who wants to whisk her off to New York where she can work for him again; a mother (Edith Fields) who doesn’t really want to have anything to do with her, but for whose affection Arline yearns. Life is so threatening that even the benevolent Ruby’s gestures of friendship are accepted with diffidence. It’s not easy to begin living again, let alone trusting again, from such a standing start.

But Norman’s play is far more interesting than it might have been if all she had offered was an account of life after prison. By creating the younger Arlie (beautifully played by Laurie Lathem) as an Arline alter ego who weaves in and out of the action, she shows us what got her into jail and why. She broadens the canvas and gives dimension to the person Arline has become. We understand the trip. We see the whole arc--from young hooligan, to troublemaker, to incorrigible, to rabble-rousing convict, to reformed prisoner--all the while harboring a complex, rebellious spirit more easily touched than she would ever let on.

It’s an engrossing journey, one that Norman examined while serving as a teacher in correctional facilities in Kentucky. The image is true and truthfully rendered at the Burbage. Lathem’s Arlie is all defiance, anger and vulnerability; Harris gives us a tamer, sadder, more vanquished Arline, anxious to make no more mistakes, but also half the person the ardent young Arlie might have been--in another world, at another time.

Arabian, who seems to excel at lowlife sleaze-bags, provides another one in Carl, a snake ready to inject his venom into everything he touches. And Doucette’s exterior sweetness as Bennie belies the deadly boor in him.

King’s Ruby is a game sort of friend, a little too game for a woman who herself has been through the same mill and knows all the pitfalls. The performance would benefit from some toughening up, starting with speech. Too many of the final scenes between Arline and Ruby (and others) become too soft-spoken. Much of the dialogue is lost, which is not easy to do in a theater as small as the Burbage. For once, a little shrillness would stand everyone in good stead. The only person who delivers some is Fields as Arline’s mother. Hers is a delicious performance that reaches far against type--and makes it.

So, in the end, does the play. Except for its minor and fixable flaws, this is a powerful, juicy production. Plans are afoot, it seems, to perform “Getting Out” at the California Institute for Women at Frontera where some of the actors received pointers last month from the inmates. It’s a good way to say thanks--and show off lessons well learned.

Plays at 2330 Sawtelle Blvd., Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., until Sept. 18. Tickets: $12.50-$15; (213) 466-1767.