STAGE REVIEW : ‘Night Owls’ Loses Sleep Over the Fate of Humanity

Two women, late at night, in their cheap Los Angeles apartment. The phone keeps ringing. When they answer it, no one is there.

It sounds like the set-up for a suspense thriller. But the question raised by “Night Owls,” the new Suzanne Lummis play at the Cast-at-the-Circle in Hollywood, is not whether the two women will make it through the night. It’s whether the society in which they live will make it through the moral depression that currently afflicts it. In other words: How can human beings remain human?

It’s an ambitious subject for such a small (two-character, one-act) canvas. There are a few signs of strain in the script. But most of the time, Lummis grounds her larger speculations in specific imagery. And, as anyone who appreciated her earlier, long-running play at this same theater, “October 22, 4004 B.C., Saturday” will confirm, Lummis’ imagery can be mesmerizing.

Not as much happens in “Night Owls” as in “October 22.” Alice (Gina Hecht) and Kathy (Lisa Pelikan) are virtually trapped in their apartment by their fascination with their unknown caller. They keep taking the phone off the hook, only to return it when their curiosity gets the better of them. In the meantime, between calls, they tell stories.

Stories about men and their incessant needs. Stories about men and their brutal impulses. Kathy, the more hopeful of the two, relates a wonderfully naive tale of the golden days of Los Angeles--that is, a dozen years ago. Alice tells murkier stories, about why she changed her name when she was 10, about an Indian boy who wanted to end it all.

While they talk, the sounds of the city outside their window intrude on their peace and security. Just as they keep changing their minds about picking up the phone, they also keep opening and shutting the windows. When the windows are closed, the noise diminishes. But the heat becomes stifling. And when they open the window and hear a snatch of “La Boheme” drifting in, Alice in particular realizes that not all of the noise out there is annoying or troubling.

Alice needed to know that, for it becomes clear that she was the victim of an assault three days ago and the witness of another assault last night. Although she just spent her day at the Renaissance Faire reading Tarot cards, her initial veneer of tranquillity is rapidly wearing thin. Hecht takes us through Alice’s deterioration with carefully measured steps, marshaling her intensity until it bursts.

Alice warns Kathy that no one is immune to the awful things that happen out there, but Kathy is not a quick study. Although she works for an escort service, she expects wonderful breakthroughs any day now. She has even been infected with the screen-writing bug, though she hasn’t a clue about how to make it pay. The role isn’t as developed as Hecht’s, but Pelikan excels at its innocent, dithery quality.

We’re never told how or why the two women became close. Maybe it’s because they both know their way around a deck of Tarot cards--though their extended exchange on this subject is a bit too extended. Nevertheless, Hecht and Pelikan make the women’s friendship credible.

Deborah Lavine’s staging felt slightly under-rehearsed on opening night, with a couple of moments of hesitation by the actresses and by whoever was operating Robert M. Smith’s sometimes baffling lighting design. Smith also did the set, a grungy single women’s flat. Philip Allen’s sound design blended in well with the sounds that might normally be heard around the neighborhood of the theater, which is only a mile or so west of the area where the play is set.

A few lines in the script come off as gratuitously witty, and the ending is somewhat contrived in its upbeat tone. It’s difficult to share the women’s excessive joy at how they get their comeuppance on the unknown caller.

But, while “Night Owls” isn’t as much of an integrated piece as “October 22,” lacking its consistently light touch, it is an important step in the development of a genuinely original Los Angeles playwright--a poet by profession who actually knows how to write for the stage as well as the page.

And “Night Owls” may well crystallize the feelings that many Angelenos have recently developed about their increasingly besieged city.

At 804 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., through Nov. 5. Tickets: $12-$15; (213) 462-0265.