SCR Script Readings Off to a Praiseworthy Start

South Coast Repertory Theatre launched the first of the season’s five NewSCRipt readings Monday night in Costa Mesa with Bruce Rodgers’ “Lost Electra,” a slightly surreal domestic tragedy full of comic touches.

Set in the 1960s, the play is chiefly about a young boy coming of age, his father (an insurance salesman and former fighter pilot obsessed by the disappearance of Amelia Earhart) and his mother (who desperately wants another child). The historic aviator also gets into the act with her husband, George Putnam.

A large and lively audience--which augurs well both for the play and the series--dove into the customary post-reading discussion like a doting aunt in search of a pinchable cheek.

In fact, glowing reactions to the script were tossed around with such abandon (“great,” “wonderful,” “seamless”) that SCR dramaturge John Glore, who was conducting the discussion, felt the urge to warn the audience: “Don’t let that intimidate you. If you didn’t like it, speak up.”

Glore’s reversal of the usual quest for praise and reassurance more or less characterizes the purpose of the NewSCRipt readings, which are designed to assess the “playability” of a work-in-progress. If the script has gone wrong, the playwright needs to know where and why. Audience reaction can help him locate it.

In this case, Rodgers, 39, seemed particularly eager for criticism. He plopped down unpretentiously on the Mainstage in front of the audience and blushed every time he was told what a terrific job he had done. For a playwright who has spent 14 years on an unproduced script, as Rodgers has on “Lost Electra,” his enthusiasm for advice was consummately congenial.

The play itself reflects a wistful sensibility with a flair for lightly humorous dialogue. An exchange early in the first act is typical. Boy: “Did you want to grow up to be a life insurance salesman?” Father: “Nobody wants to grow up to sell life insurance. Nobody wants to grow up to buy it, either.”

“Lost Electra” also tries for considerable intellectual content by juggling varied themes--feminism, taking risks, spiritual freedom and so on--as well as dispensing with a strictly conventional sense of space and time. Much of the play is structured like a dream.

Earhart reminds the insurance salesman, incidentally, that Electra is one of the Pleaides (the Seven Sisters) who disappeared because she couldn’t bear to see the destruction of Troy.

Rodgers, who lives in Lebanon, N.J., is a resident playwright at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., which has produced his other play, “Debut . . .”