STAGE REVIEW : ‘Dusk to Dawn’ a Dim Memoir

The signals are all wrong from the start of Michelle Truffaut’s Theatre West production of Terry Dodd’s underdeveloped memoir, “Dusk to Dawn at the Sunset.” The Dana Williams and Mike Callaway set, all cold white slabs and odd geometric shapes, is no place for the supposedly warm-toned family drama that Dodd has written (it garnered awards in its 1983 Denver Center Theatre premiere).

Or, at least, warm is the first feeling we have listening to son Barry (Ken Cortland) and daughter Sharron (Ellen Idelson) recall life with mother and dad (Dianne Turley Travis and Tom Dahlgren). It even sounds like Dodd has a fresh voice, as when Barry speaks of Travis’ Dorothy as proud and confident, “like a tropical storm 20 miles out.”

Soon, it’s clear that we’re in for a long post-mortem of how an uninteresting family implodes. Dorothy’s nascent dancing career gets sidetracked with marriage to Cortland’s Barry, and her bitterness builds in proportion to his philandering. Sharron learns that she was adopted, and Barry learns to love still cameras more than people. The story, moving from D.C. to New Mexico (a move, incidentally, never fully explained), is told against a backdrop of Barry’s photography projected on the white slabs--which creates its own set of problems.

The photos, unlike that later Denver Center hit, “The Immigrant,” seldom heighten our emotional involvement, and though the early photos use the younger Mindy Brandt and Joe McCarthy to depict Dorothy and Lonnie, the early scenes are played by the not-so-young Travis and Dahlgren. Dodd tries to reinforce the morose family saga with tidbits of truth that are either trite (Sharron: “They say youth is wasted on the young”) or not necessarily so (Sharron, again: “The days we swear we never forget, given enough time, we do”).

Travis comes into her own in her last scene, a desperate phone call with more electricity in it than anything in the previous two hours. But the men are about as blank as the set, and Idelson falls back on smug mannerisms.

At 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, on Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m., until Dec. 10. Tickets: $15; (213) 851-7977.