STAGE REVIEW : ‘Bus Stop’: A Timeless Trip to Inge Country

There is a contention abroad that William Inge was a minor playwright who had his moment in the sun but faded quickly because, essentially, there wasn’t much there.

This is a simplistic evaluation of a complicated man who was defeated more by his timing and depressive personality than lack of talent. The output was small compared to that of his contemporaries, and rooted in a kitchen-sink realism better relegated to film when the absurdists leapfrogged the theater into so many new, more idiosyncratic avenues of expression.

These facts do not invalidate the man’s achievements within the context of the changing ‘50s, but they do make his better plays look more and more like well-crafted period pieces. The virtue of the Pasadena Playhouse’s current revival of “Bus Stop,” which opened Sunday, is that it recognizes this and makes no attempt to be anything other than faithful--to the writer, the period, the play.

This automatically means faithful to the characters, because Inge’s theater is, bottom line, a theater of character-- which we are lucidly reminded of in director Warner Shook’s staging.

It is beautifully cast and performed on another of those period-perfect sets by Deborah Raymond and Dorian Vernacchio--in this case, the dingy brown interior of an undistinguished diner in some small Kansas town, 1955. It comes with full appointments of the period, a telephone pole and patch of sky above the roof, softly falling snow and evidence of gale-force winds rattling the diner door. (Anne Bruice did the apt costumes and Martin Aronstein the lighting.)

This is pure Inge territory--the isolation of the soul and of the landscape. The plot device is all too simple--and problematic: A bus en route westward is stuck in this place for the night because of impassable roads. Watch the interplay among its few passengers and the town folk--three folk: middle-aged worldly-wise diner owner Grace (Karen Hensel), her bright high-school age waitress Elma (Robina Ritchie) and the benign sheriff of the town, Will Masters (Jimmie Ray Weeks).

Off the bus we have the driver Carl (Richard Doyle) who has a “thing” for Grace; the traumatized Cherie (Lea Thompson), that “chantoosie” from Kansas City desperately trying to duck Bo (Daniel Reichert), her determined cowboy suitor from Montana; Bo’s guitar-strumming ranch hand and surrogate dad, Virgil (Charles Hallahan) and professor Lyman (Ray Stricklyn), a lush with a taste for verse and pubescent girls.

Put enough people in a room that they can’t escape for very long and you have dramaturgical problems, because in this theatrical convention not everyone can talk at once and still be heard. This doesn’t help the largely expositional conversations of Act One, the pace of which at the playhouse is a match for the pace of a snowbound small town.

But you don’t go to see “Bus Stop,” any more than you do “Hamlet,” to find out what happens next. You go to see how well the actors and director make it happen. Shook’s cast is so well calibrated that the play--as Inge intended--grows stronger virtually scene by scene, climaxing in a splendid Act Three.

Thompson and Reichert drive this Kansan reverse “Taming of the Shrew” with a whirring mixture of zest and sensitivity. Her Cherie moves with a suggestion of awkwardness that is the perfect lead-in to her tacky “Black Magic” performance on the diner countertop--and proof positive that love is blind, since Reichert’s unhinged Bo can only whoop and holler in ecstasy as she gets through it.

The real discovery is Reichert as the turbulent Bo--a sort of young Elliott Gould, with hungry deep dark eyes, relentless energy and puppy-dog charm. Yet by the time events chasten him so he can approach his “Cherry” with something other than the rearings of a wild colt, he also betrays oceans of tenderness.

Stricklyn’s professor shows traces of his one-man Tennessee Williams (in “Confessions of a Nightingale”), which happens to be very much the right temper for this portrayal. Ritchie’s Elma has wit and compassion along with innocence. This is a girl who will go places; probably Topeka.

Weeks’ sheriff and Hallahan’s Virge each display remarkable presence in roles that require them to do virtually nothing for long stretches. Doyle’s Carl is a friendly type, and the appealing Hensel a strong, pragmatic Grace who knows herself and harbors no illusions about her future with Carl.

Inge deserves the credit for creating these characters with beguiling insight, but Shook deserves it for orchestrating them into a such a harmonious whole, subtly underscored by Gary Stockdale’s original music. Treat a period piece with respect and it’s amazing how it continues still to speak to us.

At 39 S. El Molino Ave., Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Aug. 19. $29; (818) 356-PLAY.