STAGE REVIEW : A Merry Roasting of ‘Bette and Boo’

Set designer George Suhayda chooses birthday-party colors for Christopher Durang’s “The Marriage of Bette and Boo” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre. Its characters are always celebrating something: a wedding, a birthday, another dead baby.

Durang’s heroine, Bette (Rosina Widdowson-Reynolds) insists on having babies, even though she and her husband Boo (Bernard Baldan) are RH negative--or did the doctor say RH positive? Anyway, Bette knows that it’s God’s will for her to be a mother, because she has always liked children better than she liked people. She wants to have a whole orphanage full of them, each named after a character in “Winnie-the-Pooh.” Wouldn’t that be cute?

Since it’s Christopher Durang, we can infer an autobiographical element here. This is his “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” an examination of the people who molded him and the forces that molded them. Only, Durang does it as a cartoon.

Good cartoons exaggerate; they don’t lie. “Bette and Boo” touches the lunacy of “The Bald Soprano,” but any veteran of a Catholic household 40 years ago will recognize some of its little touches. A birthday cake with a cross planted in the middle of it? Not impossible.

Durang must have smiled when he put that in. (Or maybe director Walter Schoen, or the designers, or one of the actors, thought of it--they all seem to have gone to school with Sister Mary Ignatius.) Durang knows the mind-set of this household by heart: the piety of people who secretly fear, in some cases rightly, that they are very vicious.

For instance, the younger sister (Sabrina LaRocca) has picked up the notion that a saintly person is one who apologizes at all times for everything she does. This is at once funny and not so funny, and Durang and actress LaRocca show us both sides of it, touching the not-so-funny part only enough to show that they recognize it.

Widdowson-Reynolds’ Bette almost seems to be getting some kind of revenge on God, the way she insists on putting Him through the birth process until he gets it right. Bernard Baldan’s absent-minded Boo reacts to this by having another drink and taking another pledge in front of Father Donnally.

Ah, Father Donnally. You’ll love his retreat for “young marrieds,” the gist of which is that they got themselves into this pickle--don’t come to him. Actor Tom Oleniacz plays the good father with a surprising amount of love, plus a superfatted Barry Fitzgerald accent. It’s clear that everybody in “Bette and Boo” goes to the movies at least as often as Mass.

Therefore the Church can’t entirely be blamed for their problems, although Matt (Patrick Miller), our young narrator and clearly a spokesman for the playwright, would dearly love to make that the explanation. Alas, his grandmother (the wonderful Priscilla Allen) would probably be a monster in any culture, one of those ever-smiling Moms who give you their shoulder to lean on, after having carefully kicked out your crutches.

It’s not, Durang seems to say, that the Church has screwed up these people. They were born that way. The Church only keyed into it. Durang may write like an apostate, but he still believes in original sin, and he still, somewhere, believes in hope. There’s a lovely moment when poor, battered Matt goes to his disastrous Grandfather (the excellent William Dennis Hunt), and asks: “What should I do with my life?” It’s like Red Riding Hood going to the Wolf for advice, but the joke is that Grandpa has some: Destroy people, if you feel like it, but don’t try to change them.

The play abounds with destroyed women, particularly Mary Benson as Grandpa’s wife. She takes each of his insults with a little hiccup of merriment, like Billie Burke--oh, Dad, you’re such a tease, people will think you mean it.

As a family comedy, “Bette and Boo” is one of the darkest ones around, but this cast serves it up as merrily as ice cream and cookies, letting the viewer say: Ouch.

There’ll be a production later in the summer at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, but it’s hard to imagine it coming closer to the bone--or the funnybone.

Plays Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. Matinees Sundays at 2. Closes July 2. Tickets $14-$22. 79 Horton Plaza, San Diego. Reservations: (619) 235-8025.

‘THE MARRIAGE OF BETTE AND BOO’

Christopher Durang’s black comedy, at the San Diego Repertory Theatre. Director Walter Schoen. Setting George Suhayda. Lighting John B. Forbes. Costumes Nancy Jo Smith. Sound Jeff Ladman. Musical director Linda Vickerman. Stage manager D. Adams. With Rosina Widdowson-Reynolds, Bernard Baldan, Patrick Miller, Priscilla Allen, Sabrina LaRocca, Geraldine Joyce, Gale McNeeley, William Dennis Hunt, Mary Benson and Tom Oleniacz.