STAGE REVIEW : Survival in a Suburban Shark Cage

Don’t let the title fool you. Keith Reddin’s “Life During Wartime,” which opened Sunday at the La Jolla Playhouse’s Warren Theatre, is not about war in the traditional sense.

It is about subdivisions of the word: urban warfare, the war within us and--mostly--political warfare as in sexual and office politics. Combat zones all.

Outwardly, this unusual play is a richly comical examination of some of the territory covered by David Mamet in “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Here, too, we have sleazy, fast-talking salesmen. But all similarity absolutely ends there.

These salesmen--in particular the boss, Heinrich (Stephen Markle)--sell home security systems by brandishing terrifying statistics at people’s worst fears. That’s the deal. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Disguised though it is in funny or whimsical vestments, Reddin’s play lunges farther and deeper than first meets the ear.

It likes stretching limits and bending rules--always a good sign. It gives us poems by T.S. Eliot and e.e. cummings, and commentaries on sin and the perils of play-acting delivered by a hip John Calvin (Tony Amendola). What’s Calvin doing in this play? Butting in.

Not that Reddin deprives himself from making his own comments on such diverse topics as the private life of faceless waiters, the unbridled use of bad language in modern dramaturgy or T-shirts as the new communicators.

If this leaves you thoroughly confused, seeing the play should explain it all. Unlike Reddin’s “Nebraska,” a focused indictment of life at the bottom of a missile silo seen at this theater last season, “Life During Wartime” perpetrates more circuitous and sophisticated mischief on a broader canvas.

On its face, it is about the siege of violence that has befallen us in modern times: rapacity, a murderous absence of ethics and the wider indifference of urban life. But underneath, it is about risk and coping and the vindication of spirit.

Tommy (Josh Hamilton) is a 23-year-old apprentice salesman of security systems who works for Heinrich. He’s a nice kid, eager to learn from the master. But if he does brilliantly the first time out in the real world, it’s because Gale (Leslie Lyles), the iconoclastic divorcee to whom he “sells” his system has a system of her own.

Gale’s notion of security is a roll in the hay with Tommy, or at least on the living-room floor. She may be the mother of 16-year-old Howard (Talbert Morton), a high-school basketball player with the disconcerting habit of walking in on his mother and Tommy, but she’s a woman who believes in risk.

The relationship ends tragically, and the rest of the play is spent grappling with Tommy’s moral survival in a world of sharks.

Reddin’s transition from joy to jeopardy is “Life’s” most arbitrary link, but powerfully illustrative at the same time of life’s randomness in the urban trenches. It’s not what happens that matters but how Tommy deals with it. And the unexpected closing scene, in an antiques boutique, with rain pouring outside and symbolism pouring inside, is one of the sweetest statements about the triumph of hope.

Les Waters surrenders to the wacky idiosyncrasies of this tangy play more than he directs it, which proves to be what it takes. You have to love Reddin’s collection of approaches and the eclecticism of depicted events, which, in defiance of precedent, logic or odds, makes for a telling and beguiling whole.

Loy Arcenas has provided a simple set: a suburban photographic backdrop, fronted by a series of moving platforms to accommodate the changing scenes.

In that context, motormouth Markle is chilling as the ruthless Heinrich--a dangerous cheapskate who regards the rest of the people in the world, associates included, as objects to be used or abused.

Lyles is as morally seductive as she is sexually, not the least for standing up to the astounded Calvin and giving him a piece of her excellent mind. Morton gives Howard a nice mix of teen-age imperviousness and candor. But it is the bruised and winsome Hamilton who drives the show with a steady hand on the emotional wheel.

The balance of the actors all play several roles, with Amendola taking highest marks in the most vivid collection (including the spirited Calvin, a gun-toting suburban Nazi, a cop and an immigrant postman). Colette Kilroy deftly delivers two very different women, and Kari McGee a third, as the youthful owner of the welcoming antique shop. And Jefferson Mays has some choice moments as the disgruntled waiter who resents having his powers of addition questioned and as an unhappy barfly who agonizes over his right to exist.

These jolting bursts of inner thought into outer expression give “Life During Wartime” its uncommon texture and most colorful twists. But it is Reddin’s growing skills as a playwright that make him integrate them ever more artfully into the fabric of this rich and serious play.

At the Warren Theatre, UC San Diego campus, La Jolla Village Drive and Gilman, Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2. Ends July 29. $20-$26.; (619) 534-3960.