STAGE REVIEW : ‘Cocktail Hour’ Opens Gurney Festival

The Palos Verdes area is home for a lot of affluent people who prefer to avoid the glitz of, say, Beverly Hills. These are people who like to keep their private lives private.

In other words, there should be plenty of knowing chuckles from the audience for A.R. Gurney’s “The Cocktail Hour,” which has opened a three-play Gurney repertory festival by the New Place Theatre Company at the Norris Theatre in the Palos Verdes hills.

Gurney’s comedy is about a writer who tries to obtain his upper-crust parents’ permission to have his play about them, also called “The Cocktail Hour,” staged. His parents, particularly his father, are horrified. Over cocktails, the family--including the writer’s sister--unloads some long-suppressed feelings and memories.

It’s a “Long Cocktail Hour’s Journey Into Dinner,” written with the light touch those words imply.

Director Tom Troupe’s cast at the Norris is sufficiently different from the original cast that performed “Hour” at the Old Globe and the Doolittle to interest those fans who have already seen it.

Michael Holmes’ father looks relatively young and trim, which adds even more irony to his ever-present warnings about his imminent demise. His irascibility isn’t as vocally bombastic as the original’s Keene Curtis, but his face flushes mightily as he bemoans the indignities to which his son subjects him. The bottom line: He gets the laughs.

Tom Fitzsimmons’ son has more heft than the winsome Bruce Davison; it’s hard to believe he has accommodated the old man as long as he has. He’s best when he finally gets to talk instead of listen.

Patricia Place is perfectly in place as the mother. Marsha Kramer looks too young to be the older sister, who’s confronting her own mid-life crisis.

Robert Smith’s set and Trudy Kapner’s costumes are on the nose. If the revivals of Gurney’s earlier plays “The Dining Room” and “What I Did Last Summer” are as good, Palos Verdes should take this festival to its heart.

Theatre Festival 1991, Norris Theatre, 27570 Crossfield Drive, Rolling Hills Estates. “The Cocktail Hour,” tonight at 8; March 24, 7 p.m. “The Dining Room,” Saturday, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Tuesday and Wednesday, 8 p.m. “What I Did Last Summer,” Thursday and next Friday, 8 p.m., March 23, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Single tickets: $24; series $67.50 (213) 544-0403. Running time of “The Cocktail Hour”: 2 hours, 5 minutes.