STAGE REVIEW : Exploring Missed Connections in ‘Psalms’

Beneath the quiet desperation of everyday life, there’s a subtle, subliminally frantic need to connect.

For most, it becomes the basis for a normal pattern of survival that’s no worse than a bad cold. We can handle it. For others, like the central figures in “Neon Psalms” at Theater West, it’s a debilitating egocentric hell sending them deeper into the shadows that prevent any real contact or communication.

That’s the message of Thomas Strelich’s wise and intriguing portrait of the Mears family, a portrait not unlike Dorian Gray’s, growing uglier and meaner as the lights of Los Angeles grow brighter on the horizon south of the blistered California desert near Boron.

But it’s also a portrait drawn with empathy and humor. Strelich doesn’t condemn the Mearses, he merely shows them as they are in the richness of their reality and the total devastation of their shattered visions. They make us smile, and often laugh, and finally wince in discomfort at the final recognition of their despair.

Strelich has a finely tuned ear for the almost surreal conversational patterns that pass as everyday chat, ingrained responses to ancient arguments that no one wins, the rimshots of lame one-upmanship. Luton and Patina Mears have been at it most of their lives and they’re grand masters of the art.

Patina, in a fascinating performance by Pat Crawford Brown, has found her trap in the simplistic Jesus of “Christian Broadcast” and finds a Bible quotation to back up her every self-absorbed deception. John Carter is a tower of patience as Luton Mears. Busying himself with the pets that have replaced Patina as the center of his existence, he has gone from the two dogs Patina destroyed (“It was God’s will”) to the turtles she insists on freeing when he’s not looking. Scorpions are next; Luton is used to poisonous affection.

Daughter Barbara has descended on them and she’s not in much better shape, divorced and estranged from her two young sons and not yet ready to start the “new life” Patina tries to force on her: “I’m not done with the old one.” Sheila Shaw is rock solid in her grasp of “un-petite” Barbara’s own lonely panic.

The one light in her dark tunnel is Joseph P. McCarthy’s Ray, a propane gas deliveryman, himself escaping from Boron’s dead-end existence to Bakersfield, “where all the smart people are moving.” The play’s funniest and most ironic moment is their brief courtship ritual, and both actors glow with the bittersweet honesty of their dating game.

Scene Shop’s decrepit, sand-worn trailer and corrugated shed look as if they were just hauled in from the high desert, and the effect is heightened by Lawrence Oberman’s lighting, Brenda Au’s costumes and Andy Parks’ subtle sound design. But it’s the performances and Andy Griggs’ compassionate direction that find the core of Strelich’s play.

At 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m., through Oct. 15. Tickets: $15; (213) 466-1767.