STAGE REVIEW : Shaky ‘Aftershock’ Views Family Chasms

They keep telling us that the “big one” is coming, with a vengeance. It’s going to lay us out flat, kick some tail. The future includes one mean rumbler, and none of us are really prepared.

Orange County playwright Allison Gappa agrees with the Red Cross and everybody else who keeps warning us about earthquakes--indifference is suicidal, and education and readiness are the ways to prevent disaster. The Red Cross sends out pamphlets; Gappa wrote “Aftershock,” now premiered at the small Way Off Broadway theater in Santa Ana.

With only the best intentions, Gappa’s play tries to do many things, especially inform us about the dangers while keeping us following the melodrama that is unleashed after a 9-point-something quake forces a feuding family into an underground bomb shelter. “Aftershock” is part survival kit, part soap opera and part religious sampler.

It’s also a pretty rough piece of theater. The dialogue often sounds false, and certain scenes are weak and contrived. There are also a few continuity problems, the most obvious being the earthquake’s carnage--in the first act, the McNamara family and assorted in-laws apparently don’t want to leave the shelter because it would be a hellish 10-mile walk to town, but the second act has them trapped under tons of rubble.

Oh well. These may be mistakes Gappa can correct. It’ll take some work, though.

Gappa and set designer Robert Wilson have given “Aftershock” a sense of reality when it comes to preparedness. The look is right, with bottled water, canned foods, vats for waste and all the other necessities required to survive the days following a quake. Gappa, who also directs, said she was counseled by the Red Cross, and it shows.

However, in trying to make the play a theatrical event, she tends to lose proportion. The “big one,” by all accounts, will be terrifying and destructive, but Gappa likens it to a nuclear attack. Trees are ripped out by their roots, the landscape is leveled and characters ask each other what kind of “world” remains. They seem to think the earthquake has wasted the entire globe, not just Southern California.

The physical and mental impact on the McNamaras is graphic. Just about everyone gets hurt, and mother Hilda (Laurel Koelsch) ends up bedridden with a bloody blow to the head. It’s very intense.

The pressures reveal that the three daughters, especially pretty model Melissa (Denison Glass) and icy lawyer Lenore (Brenda Fogarty), don’t dig each other. They squabble non-stop. Melissa’s photographer husband (Tony Reverditto) snorts cocaine and devilishly snaps flash pictures of everybody. Web (Ron Althouse), a family friend, takes off his shirt and puts the moves on Lenore. The local pastor (Brendan Beach) tells everybody to have faith in God. He tells them that a lot.

But the wildest stuff is left for dad (Thomas Reilly), an ex-Navy man who built the shelter and has his annoying good sense vindicated by the quake. He screams at everybody to get with the program. He starts ordering folks around. He gets red in the face and shakes one of his daughters. In short, he turns into a subterranean Capt. Queeg.

Way Off Broadway has acquired a reputation for being a little wacky, and this first act has its wacky moments, all right. It even has a certain cockeyed charm, especially when Reilly does his thing and Reverditto sasses about.

But “Aftershock” is resigned to have a bittersweet but generally happy ending, and the second act ties up loose ends in various clumsy ways. All the domestic battling stops--the girls start getting along, the photographer says no to drugs and is nice to everyone and Web and Lenore begin courting. Even dad mellows out (one character says, “I guess it just took the opening of the earth to open his heart.”).

The aftershocks finally stop. They dig through. There’s light outside. The pastor says a long prayer, and the play ends.

‘AFTERSHOCK’

A Way Off Broadway premiere of Allison Gappa’s drama. Directed by Allison Gappa. With Thomas Reilly, Ron Althouse, Michael Lundberg, Brendan Beach, Tony Reverditto, Laurel Koelsch, Brenda Fogarty, Denison Glass and Shelley Beach. Set by Robert Wilson. Lighting by Tony Reverditto. Sound by Del De Pierro and Rick Sherman. Makeup by Margaux Lancaster and Paul Thompson. Plays Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. through Sept. 9 at 1058 E. 1st St., Santa Ana. Tickets: $8 to $10. (714) 547-8997.