STAGE REVIEW : Flaws Visible in ‘Vanishing Points’

Truth isn’t always stranger than fiction. But it’s often more ridiculous.

Take “Vanishing Points,” Martin Jones’ play based on the experiences of artist Elizabeth Peak, whose family was murdered in 1972.

As it stands, “Vanishing Points” (at the International City Theatre) is a serious-minded failure, so set upon its grim business of telling a sensational true story that any semblance of dramatic credibility is passed by in the belief that a strong situation alone makes a play.

Yet two International City successes--”Distant Fires” and Jones’ “West Memphis Mojo”--proved that good drama can emerge from everyday circumstances.

Jones’ Nebraska family in “Vanishing Points” seems realistically observed, until Mama (Bobbi Holtzman) berates Beth as if she’s a toddler. This is a memory play (Don Gruber’s minimalist set and Chuck Estes’ ponderous music unsubtly remind us), so we’ll grant that Beth, a would-be painter, is recalling her mother in dark hues. It’s a shaky stylistic leap to make, however, when the family is so quickly sketched.

This makes the subsequent tragedy much less than it should be. Jones has Beth off smoking pot in the fields with her boyfriend when the police tell her that her family has been murdered. A nice device--or did it happen that way?

It didn’t, but “Vanishing Points” is perpetually triggering this question, caught between the rock of Fact and the hard place of Fiction. Peak’s pain of guilt may be her own, but Jones appears to have allowed it to overwhelm the integrity of his drama. Beth’s talk of her guilt sounds ludicrous, partly because Beth’s character is mirage-like--as if she is recalling herself, and doing a poor job of it.

Beth is perhaps even less than what Jones wrote because of Judith Borne’s banal performance. Director Peter Grego and Borne seem to be going for a matter-of-fact, cornfed approach to Beth, and thinking that with this familiar foundation, the coming terror will not be just Beth’s, but ours.

What are we to make of a woman, though, who is so passive during a callous police inquisition? Borne does nothing with the passivity; she is simply there. She isn’t helped by Beth’s character details, such as that her artwork is absent of human presence. Not much to hang a performance on, especially when the language never penetrates the surface.

Seldom has such tragedy befallen such a cipher, with neither the actress nor her supporting cast injecting any further content of their own. Arlette Stella Poland, as Beth’s older sister, looks as if she might bring some life to the play when it needs it most, but she and Borne never interact as sisters with a history. Tom Simcox has little to do as Papa, but Simcox as Beth’s uncle does feel like he’s trying to solve the crime.

Five of the eight cast members double up in roles. It doesn’t work, not even with Matth Wisterman as Beth’s beau and a desert rancher with a pistol. Hilary Green is especially a victim of this strategy: miscast as Beth’s kid sister, she is also saddled with a disposable role as a kite maker who robs Beth.

Symptomatic of the play’s innumerable problems is the very next scene. Green, believe it or not, returns the stolen goods.

At 4901 E. Carson St., Long Beach City College, on Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 and 7:30 p.m., through Nov. 6. Tickets: $8-$10; (213) 420-4275.