STAGE REVIEW : The Tension Mounts in Jamie Baker’s ‘Rockville’ : The director gets the most out of his cast in this story that revolves around a drunken jockey.

So much of Jamie Baker’s “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” revolves around Ed, a dangerous, drunken jockey who’s in trouble with the racing commission, that we’re primed for a firestorm when he finally shows up at the end of the first act.

The moseying style of the early scenes in “Rockville,” given a valid staging by Rancho Santiago College’s Professional Actors Conservatory, reveals the local topography with the plot details in small but clear relief. We’re lulled by the sleepiness but know something’s up.

The setting is a bar in Louisville the day after the 1944 Kentucky Derby. Ed (Darin Heames) has been suspended for fixing races, and the fallout is a wrecked marriage to his pretty wife, Mary Rita (Betsy Ferguson).

Another jockey (Herman, played by the author) is suspected of tattling to the commission. He’s in love with Mary Rita, so there’s motive. Mary Rita’s interested, too; they have a history and it doesn’t take much seducing to get her to visit one of the upstairs bedrooms with him.

Everyone seems to be waiting, like us, for Ed to bolt in. The other ingredients in this melodramatic stew are George (Pete Bensen), a young commissioner ignorant of the panel’s shadier side, and his mousy girlfriend, Elsie (Ceptembre Anthony). Then there’s Richard (Jerry McGonigle), an on-the-make ex-con and country singer involved with the tough Darlene (Kimberly M. Davis). She owns the bar.

The relationships and connections come out in slow, ordinary passages, until Ed strides in, a tiny rooster so up-tight and hard that he looks like he could chew glass and pick his teeth with a blow torch. That’s when the fun starts.

“Rockville,” which was nominated for best play of 1988 by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, isn’t big on insight or complicated visions. But that’s fine, because Baker is a whiz with characters, making them as real as the sweet, soddy smell of a horse after a good run.

He knows how to keep his story dramatic without resorting to exhausted sensationalism. The second act, despite the disappointing softness of the very end, has closing-stretch endurance.

Director Victor Pappas, who won a 1988 award from the L.A. critics for his staging of another Baker play, “South Central Rain,” gets the most out of his cast, a mix of advanced students and professionals.

As Ed, Heames is scary, a coiled spring ready to bounce violently in every direction. His anger even seeps through when he’s sitting down, trying to control himself. Heames is responsible for the second act’s tension, and the rest of the actors play off it well. You can forgive the occasional lapses in Southern accents.

On the technical side, Thomas Buderwitz has detailed his set nicely, even down to the Sharp’s beers and the racing photos hung around the fairly gloomy bar. There’s nothing unusual about Gary Christensen’s lighting, but the simplicity is appropriate here. Karen J. Weller’s costumes reflect the mid-1940s accurately.

‘DON’T GO BACK TO ROCKVILLE’

A Rancho Santiago College Professional Actors Conservatory production of Jamie Baker’s drama. Directed by Victor Pappas. With Darin Heames, Betsy Ferguson, Jamie Baker, Ceptembre Anthony, Pete Bensen, Kimberly M. Davis and Jerry McGonigle. Set by Thomas Buderwitz. Lighting by Gary Christensen. Costumes by Karen J. Weller. Sound by Michael Killen. Plays Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m., with a Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. at the campus’s Little Theater, 17th and Bristol streets, Santa Ana. Tickets: $6 to $10. (714) 667-3177 or (714) 997-5864.