STAGE REVIEW : ‘Cat’s Paw’ Too Timid to Land on Its Feet

A play about terrorism must convey fear. The test of “When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?” at the Bowery Theatre in 1987 was whether actor Kim McCallum could bully the audience into thinking that his character really could and would kill the people he was holding hostage in the diner.

McCallum did just that with an electrifying performance that made audience members in the front row shrink back in their seats.

The actors in the North Coast Repertory Theatre’s current production of “Cat’s Paw,” William Mastrosimone’s play about an American terrorist group, are not up to the challenge of playing people ready to kill. They are too rational in expression, too neat in demeanor and ultimately too green at their craft to portray lost, desperate and violently angry souls.

As a result, whatever force the play does have is a function of the timing of the work.

In the week before the opening of “Cat’s Paw,” the hostage crisis in the Middle East again made front-page news with the reported execution of Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins by his captors, Hezbollah, or Party of God.

Oddly enough, “Cat’s Paw” was similarly relevant when it made its San Diego debut at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986. In the days that followed the U.S. air raid on Libya, the play’s message about the courtship between terrorism and the media, which exploit--and are exploited by--the relationship, excited much local discussion.

But coincidence alone does not make a play. The strength of the actors in the Old Globe production glossed over weaknesses in the script. Here, Phillip Montzen and Lauren Hamilton, as the terrorists, err by trying to make themselves appear as rational people who take a hostage--played by Bill Maass--as a dramatic means of protesting water pollution.

The cause, as Mastrosimone himself has said in interviews, is beside the point. The story has more to do with the terrorists’ infatuation with the media--here represented by Lynette Winter as an anchorwoman--and the media’s love-hate relationship with the terrorists who may give her a career-making story.

The media may share some culpability with terrorists by giving them such attractive platforms to speak from in exchange for their crimes. But the tendency to overlook the hand that pulls the trigger in lieu of the one that writes about it is quickly becoming something of a cliche. Lee Blessing’s villains in his new play, “Down the Road,” at the La Jolla Playhouse, are also the media. Both he and Mastrosimone focus on the media and ignore the people who kill, suggesting, in effect, that if nobody wrote about killers they would just go away.

Olive Blakistone’s usually sensitive direction seems curiously inattentive to detail here. Winter’s anchorwoman, who ought to at least start out as an unflappable Diane Sawyer type, bubbles over with self-righteous indignation far too early. There needs to be more of the seductive cat-and-mouse game between her and Montzen as the terrorist leader. He, after all, has the cheese of a big story in his paw for her.

Hamilton and Montzen bring energy to their roles as the terrorists, but neither seems weathered or driven enough for the role. Marjorie Halterman’s Army fatigues for the terrorists don’t help. They are crisp and clean enough to be trendy--a kind of yuppies-go-bombing look. Only Maass as the hostage brings the appropriate labored understanding one can expect from a terribly average person swept up by events he doesn’t understand.

The drab set by Leslee Baren provides the most chilling element of the production, with the bomb-in-progress on one table contrasting with the ground coffee and bouillon cubes on the other. It is a reminder of the banality of evil that can happen anywhere and everywhere with the most ordinary of intellects in the most ordinary of settings. That seems to be the most frightening and lasting message given by the show.

At 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 7 p.m. Sundays, with occasional Sunday matinees, through Sept. 30. At 987-D Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach, 481-1055.

‘CAT’S PAW’

By William Mastrosimone. Director is Olive Blakistone. Set by Leslee Baren. Lighting by Alexandra Pontone. Costumes by Marjorie Halterman. With Phillip Montzen, Bill Maass, Lauren Hamilton and Lynette Winter.