STAGE REVIEW : Saroyan Revival Dips Into the Melting Pot

The so-called American melting pot, that increasingly discredited cliche, once held the sort of vigor that led many of the most notable playwrights of the 1930s to re-create the pot on the stage.

From Elmer Rice to Clifford Odets and from Sidney Kingsley to Moss Hart, they celebrated its ethnic splendor, railed against its inequalities, placed its contradictions on exhibit and generally beckoned its glorious future.

William Saroyan, for instance, describes the 1939 setting for “The Time of Your Life,” which is being revived here by the Professional Actors Conservatory of Rancho Santiago College, as a specifically “American place.” It is a San Francisco waterfront bar, home to every imaginable neighborhood type.

The Irish are here along with the Italians and the Arabs. The hookers stop by along with the swells. So do the cops and the dockworkers, the sailors and the drunks, the newsboys and the con men, the lovelorn and the simply lost. The place fairly teems with the species Homo Americanus like a zoo on a quietly domestic Sunday morning.

But in fact, Nick’s Pacific Street Saloon, Restaurant and Entertainment Palace could have existed only in Saroyan’s affectionate world, certainly not in the real one then or now.

The righteous proprietor of Nick’s live-and-let-live honky-tonk pours free drinks, takes a strictly fatherly interest in the local hookers, tosses an intrusive vice cop on his ear, provides meals as well as work for the unemployed and gets regular visits from his white-haired old mother.

And Nick isn’t even the hallowed saint of this whimsically meandering, post-Depression paean to the common man.

That honor goes to a gentle Irishman with a bum leg, one of the saloon regulars named Joe. He sits around drinking champagne, while flirting with the ladies and dispensing dollar bills from his vest-pocket bankroll to anyone who shows the slightest need of money. Joe’s largess goes so far that it extends beyond mere acquaintances to anonymous passersby on the street.

When the newsboy arrives to hawk his papers, Joe buys not one but all of them and tosses them away unread--a munificent gesture, both charming and cynical. When desolate Kitty Duvall can’t make the rent on her hooker’s wages, Joe peels more bills and pays for her move to a better hotel. When his gofer, Tom, needs a fresh start in love and in life, Joe arranges everything.

Because “The Time of Your Life” is virtually all texture and no plot, a series of acting “moments” strung out over nearly three hours, the strength of any production is particularly dependent on the quality of the players. Meanwhile, the very reasons that make it a difficult play to negotiate--26 speaking roles, for example--also make it a desirable choice for a training program.

Victor’s Pappas’ PAC staging happily manages to finesse the problem of cast inexperience with directorial clarity and several nicely shaped collegiate performances, despite a glaring weakness in the central role of Joe, wanly played by Phillip Beck (the lone professional actor and, ironically, the conservatory director).

If Mark Ciglar gives the comedy’s most extroverted and entertaining performance as Kit Carson, a Western old-timer with a con man’s gift of gab and a skein of eccentric stories, Darin Heames gives the most authentic performance as Dudley, a bespectacled young man desperately trying to connect with the woman he loves on the saloon’s public telephone.

But the real test of the production’s authenticity comes in the roles of Harry, the would-be hoofer-comedian who wants to break into show business, and Wesley, the starving drifter whose talent for noodling on the piano turns into gainful employment.

As Harry, Pete Benson somehow creates the illusion that he can do a bit of soft shoe, though he doesn’t really seem a dancer. But, much more than that, Benson captures the yearning innocence that one imagines Gene Kelly projecting as the original Harry in the Broadway production. In his climactic speech, which is one of the subtler peaks of the play, Benson achieves a wonderful, double-edged flush of emotion.

Wesley, a totally self-effacing role that reflects a certain amount of racial stereotyping, has less importance as a character but is essential to the texture of the play just the same. Saroyan calls him “a colored boy” in his stage directions, and he is supposed to be portrayed by a black actor. Here he is played by David Fraioli, who is white.

Given the choice of casting someone with the right skin color who can’t play the piano or someone with the wrong skin color who can, Pappas made the appropriate move. It would have been disconcerting to listen to canned music for the piano tunes that compose so much of the play’s aural backdrop.

Meanwhile, James Rice gives a solid-as-rock portrayal of Nick. Sam Zeller brings a blushing energy to the boyish Tom. Betsy Ferguson has the right look as Kitty, though she needs more personal allure.

Notable cameos include Barth L. Maher as the union intellectual McCarthy, Dan Cole as the sadistic vice cop Blick, Terra Shelman as an enthralled society lady and Jeff Hutcherson as a drunk who bounces off the furniture like a billiard ball.

Mention must also be made of the attractive set, particularly the red-and-blue jukebox that plays and replays “The Missouri Waltz,” and the “American Destiny” pinball machine, a flag-waving contraption that is played nonstop for the entire length of the show by Todd Terry as the silently obsessive pinball whiz Willie.

‘THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE’

A production of Rancho Santiago College’s PAC Theatre Company. Written by William Saroyan. Directed by Victor Pappas. Scenic design by E. Scott Shaffer. Costumes by Karen J. Weller. Lighting by David C. Palmer. Sound design by David Edwards. Makeup by Karen Juneman. With Phillip Beck, Sam Zeller, James Rice, Mark Bollinger, Todd Terry, Ryan Hammond, Betsy Ferguson, Darin Heames, Pete Benson, David Fraioli, Dan Cole, Noelle Harris, Barth L. Maher, Max Goldberg, Mark Ciglar, Michaelle Archer, Susan R. Hamilton, Chris Arnold, Karen Razler, Lisa Beil, Jim Linde, Terra Shelman, Elizabeth Gardner, Steve Diebold, Jeff King and Jeff Hutcherson. Performances continue through Oct. 21 at the PAC Theatre in the Ability Plus School, 333 S. Prospect St., Orange. Curtain is at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $6 to $10. Information: (714) 667-3163.