STAGE REVIEW : ‘Crackwalker’ a Stroll on the Squalid Side

“The Crackwalker,” Toronto playwright Judith Thompson’s scabrous dissection of four emotional and psychological cripples, is such a hair shirt of a production at the Odyssey that it’s uncomfortable to watch.

That doesn’t mean it’s not a bracing experience. It’s much like “Drugstore Cowboy” without the drugs. The crack in the title is not cocaine. It’s the thin line between decency and squalor.

Under Colman deKay’s rigorous direction, the rejects and castoffs in this uncompromising play are so sharply observed that you can imagine that a social worker wrote it (and in fact, Thompson was one when she wrote it in 1980 at the age of 26). The plot and situations are routine enough. We follow two couples as they lust and squabble and batter one another with inchoate anger. Misery and fear keep their motors running.

Thompson has created authentic voices, particularly the odd scratchy sounds that creep from a repulsive but not irredeemable basket case named Therese, played with tour de force abandon by Hallie Todd. Her confused companion/lover, who’s only slightly less dim than she is, is softly, almost delicately played by Willie Garson. The worst case scenario for this couple, the arrival of a baby, establishes the playwright’s acutely painful subject: the helplessness of society when the pitiable aren’t derelict enough to merit help.

The other couple, although more accessible, is equally pathetic and trapped. He’s a vulgar, coarse trucker and she is his hapless love slave. They knock each other around a lot and then get lovey. Peter Schreiner deftly catches his character’s rooster-in-the-hen-yard swagger, and Lysa Hayland refreshingly portrays her victim as an attractive, self-possessed woman who’s not nearly as strong as she looks.

The wide, black Odyssey 3 stage can be a problem for set designers to fill, but Alan Jones’ apartment/diner design catches the requisite shabbiness with the help of Lynne Peryon and Doc Ballard’s isolated pools of lighting. Lili Dove’s costumes nicely define characterization.

At 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Mondays through Wednsdays, 8 p.m., indefinitely. $14.50. (213) 477-2055.