STAGE REVIEW : Rape, Reality Examined in ‘Telling Time’

Annie works at a library, and once a week she’s the story lady. She weaves fantasies for the boys and girls. Then one day, she’s raped. In Laura Shamas’ “Telling Time” at West Coast Ensemble, that’s only the beginning of the story. Annie’s problems double.

Immediately after the attack, Annie can’t face the reality. She sinks into her own fantasy world to blot out the awful truth of what’s happened to her. Her gynecologist Monica becomes Glinda, the good witch of Oz, her mother Mrs. Nesbitt turns into a devilish Roman Catholic demon swathed in scarlet, with a mitered hat, and her best friend Cheryl appears to her as a giddy Snow White. Even her fiance Zach becomes a swashbuckling pirate.

Well and good--Annie is buffering herself and slowly weaving her way through her own emotional reconstruction. But Annie has yet to find out about the fantasy worlds of those closest to her, the fairy tales they all carry as emotional baggage when Annie finds out she’s pregnant by her attacker.

This, and not the rape, is the core of Shamas’ play. Suddenly Annie is the only one facing her reality--alone. An overbearingly solicitous Jeanette Miller, as the mother, believes the church and having the baby can solve all Annie’s problems; her doctor, sensible but oh-so businesslike in Christy Barrett’s reading, opts for abortion and backs it up with a $5,000 estimate for the birth.

Kevin Scott Allen, warm and sensitive as Zach, doesn’t want his marriage plans upset, and Barbara Milan’s best friend is honest but unfeeling. Annie’s choices, after all, are Annie’s choices, and the real-life fantasies of her circle no longer compute with the growing solidity of her own new reality.

Under Allison Liddi’s lucid direction, Kim Taylor as Annie reaches into both the storybook and real facets of Annie’s trauma and evolves an honest, thoughtful portrait of a young woman coming of age. Liddi’s staging, which uses the space to the fullest, is as fluid and natural as the performances.

Approached here with insight and more than a little humor, a difficult subject becomes as simple as a children’s story, but don’t be fooled; though the author might have gone deeper, she provides some wisdom and maybe even a couple of answers.

At 6240 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood; Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m.; indefinitely. $12.50; (213) 871-1052.