STAGE REVIEW : ‘Joanna’s Husband’: Wit From the Mine Field of Marriage

If novelist Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey proved herself a skillful dramatist when she adapted her novel, “A Woman of Independent Means,” into a spunky, touching and durably literate one-woman show in 1983, she has now, in 1989, proved she can do that sort of thing again.

Lightning can strike twice, even if not in the same place, in the same way or at the same level of intensity. Witness “Joanna’s Husband and David’s Wife,” which opened Sunday at the Pasadena Playhouse’s Balcony Theatre.

This latest conversion from novel to play has two characters on stage instead of one: Joanna and David (Kendall Hailey and Rick Lenz). It is tamer than “Woman of Independent Means” (based on Forsythe Hailey’s Texas grandmother) and lighter in spirit, though it deals with serious living. What remain the same are the tools: a literate wit and banter whose barbs and articulate insights reach deep into personal experience. This time the experience is that of an iconoclastic marriage--her own.

Beyond the obvious echo in “Joanna’s Husband and David’s Wife” of Forsythe Hailey’s union of many years to playwright Oliver Hailey (“Father’s Day,” “Who’s Happy Now?”), there is the additional one of having daughter Kendall play her mother’s part. Adaptation in this case (in contrast to “Woman”) has also meant more rigorous trimming--the elimination of quite a few of the novel’s ancillary characters--and the spiking of the marital thrust of events with additional dialogue.

That was made necessary by the novel’s form: that of a diary, written by Joanna for their daughter Julia, then found by David, who is compelled to amend events as he saw and lived them. Or believes he lived them. It’s a cunning idea that makes for the usual comedy of miscommunication and opposite perceptions that pepper all relationships.

And comedy it is. Joanna is a Texas attorney’s daughter whose parents belong to the country-club set, while David’s mother Eula Lee’s idea of upward mobility is moving into a tract home.

“If I had to describe a Eula Lee,” sniffs Joanna, “she’d come pretty close to the mark.”

They meet as cub reporters on a Dallas newspaper and quickly fall in love. David is a playwright, but who is Joanna? “Joanna’s Husband and David’s Wife” is the tale of the 25-year trajectory from the latter to the former: how Joanna went from newspapering with David to becoming David’s (house)wife, to re-entering the world of letters via the Hollywood soaps, finally securing a place in the world by writing a novel. David, not always happily, adjusts to becoming . . . . Joanna’s husband.

True to life? One assumes so, with a few curlicues thrown in and another few left out. Aside from the diceyness of David’s career, most of the humor emerges from the contrasts: two people with so many hates in common and so many opposing preferences; two people negotiating those widely differing backgrounds, and those searches for (Joanna) and threats to (David) personal identity.

The humor is free-ranging in such a mine field of opportunity. Both characters are distinct and delightful. Except for the perplexing age differential between Hailey and Lenz (she’s in her early 20s, he’s over 40), each has a healthy grasp of characters that are a spicy testament to mankind’s unlimited powers of adaptation.

Hailey (an author in her own right) has a luminous presence that would benefit from the shedding of a mild affectation of speech--a kind of Katharine Hepburn breathiness that doesn’t quite ring true. The inner glow, Pepsodent smile and auburn hair need no embellishment. She may not be a highly practiced performer, but there’s an impish and very real intelligence at work. That should suffice.

Lenz, of course, is a seasoned actor who brings to David a dead-pan humor that perfectly suits the temper of the no-nonsense character and the piece. If the idea in casting one so young with one so much older was to illustrate Joanna and David at different times of their lives, the device backfires. It complicates believability and makes it that much harder for chemistry to spark between them.

That is the weakest factor in a staging that is otherwise enlightened and directed with model simplicity by Bill Cort. Cort sets the tone for all other production values: Martin Aronstein’s warm bright lights, Garland Riddle’s unobtrusive costuming and an uncluttered setting of blond wood shuttered panels by Deborah Raymond and Dorian Vernacchio.

Ultimately the play perfectly reflects the book: a good “read” that will keep you enjoyably engrossed, will charm you with the originality of its anta-protagonists and that is over when it’s over.

At 39 S. El Molino Ave., Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8:30 p.m.; Sundays 2:30 and 7:30 p.m.; matinee Saturdays, 5:30 p.m. Ends Sept. 10. Tickets: $22; (818) 356-PLAY.