STAGE REVIEW : Mamet’s ‘Edmond’ Lands a Soft Punch on the Beast Within

David Mamet’s taut “Edmond” is getting a not-so-taut workout at the Powerhouse Theatre in Santa Monica.

This is a short play, but it ought to pack a wallop. Mamet’s meek hero, Edmond, is as faceless as the hero of “Everyman.” All we know about him is that he is 37 and has decided, with the help of a Gypsy fortuneteller, that he is “in the wrong place.”

He leaves his unexciting wife, starts sniffing around massage parlors, gets bilked in a street game, buys a knife at a pawnshop, kills a girl and ends up servicing his black cellmate in prison.

Is Edmond horrified? At first. He thought that if he said he was sorry and had learned his lesson, he could go home.

But “that is not the transaction.” And Edmond finds himself strangely contented. He has demonstrated that warrior blood runs in his veins; he has discovered that conventional morality is a fiction; and he has found safe harbor behind bars. He is in the right place at last.

“Edmond” plays to the fears of the solid citizen about what would happen if “the beast in me” got loose. It is a bit pretentious, in its brusque way, but it is also onto something. In production, it ought to have the unanswerability of a nightmare. That is not the effect at the Powerhouse, despite some decent individual performances.

Matt Landers’ Edmond, for example, has the round-eyed innocence of a Charlie Brown. Combine that with a receding hairline, and we see very much the sort of American boy-man that Mamet has in mind, at once gullible and a potential killer.

Some of the street people that Edmond runs up against are also true to type, without being types. Midori Meyer’s peep-show girl is about business as well as pleasure. Carolyn Purdy-Gordon’s brothel manager is upset with herself today for some reason. Hakim Sulayman’s card sharp makes us feel the precariousness of running a sidewalk game.

What’s lacking is a stylistic frame for the show. Two directors are credited --Lionel Mark Smith and Gwenn Victor--but there’s no sense of an overall vision.

The individual chapters in Edmond’s descent into hell play well enough, but there’s too much dead air between them while the furniture gets shifted into place for the next scene. These scene changes could have been subtly choreographed, so that the beat of Edmond’s fate didn’t get lost. It does get lost and we are left with a succession of naturalistic short takes that tell us something about the way a man can activate his own worst fears, but not enough.

Rather than never letting us go, the production is constantly letting us go. The design is no help. Less isn’t necessarily more in theater: not unless it’s presented with imagination. The design here is rudimentary rather than austere. (Robert Mellette did the lights, Mark Fite the set and Kate McDermott the costumes.) Not enough.

Plays Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 8 p.m. through July 18. 3116 Second St., Santa Monica. (213) 392-6529.

‘EDMOND’

David Mamet’s play, at the Powerhouse. Presented by The Road Company. Executive producer Frank Barbaro. Producers Kelly Edwards and Gretchen Weber. Directors Lionel Mark Smith and Gwenn Victor. Set design Mark Fite. Costumes Kate McDermott. Lighting Robert Mellette. Stage manager Irene Schonwit. With Cordis Heard, George James, Cynthia Kania, Matt Landers, Lee Magnuson, Lorrie Marlow, Midori Meyer, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Phil Simms, Hakim Sulayman and Ian Patrick Williams.