STAGE REVIEW : An Involving ‘Independence’ at Gnu Theatre

In an era when families rarely stay together generation by generation, there’s a lot of guilt floating around about children who desert their parents in their declining years. In Lee Blessing’s 1984 “Independence,” Evelyn Briggs is one parent trying her damnedest to keep at least one of the kids around for company--and support.

In this involving production at North Hollywood’s Gnu Theatre, it’s pretty obvious why she’s having a problem. Her oldest daughter put her in a mental hospital for three months just before leaving town. Her youngest plans on leaving home 15 minutes after she graduates from high school. Her middle one is pregnant but also verges on deserting the sinking ship that is their mother.

Are the kids wrong? Not in this case. Evelyn, in a lucid and intricate performance by Jan Burrell that easily bounces from cloying cheer to irrational shrieking, troubled or not, is a conniver, infallibly picking the right moment to toss a self-serving trauma into her daughters’ lives. This modern-day Amanda Wingfield isn’t kidding anyone. She knows what she’s about at all times.

In particular, she’s never been able to con Kess, her first-born, who got out to find happiness and security with her teaching job in Minneapolis and her female lover. Suanne Spoke plays Kess from the security of having lived her own life for four years. Her performance is the backbone of director Jeff Seymour’s human and often volatile staging, its reality based in the mercurial changes of mood and attitude among the daughters.

Buoyancy contrasting with deep inner bitterness mark the excellent performances of Sachi Parker and Sabina Weber as, respectively, the middle daughter who tosses out the idea of marriage to the father of her child so she can stay with mom, and the youngest who desperately believes that “meaningless sex” is her key to the outside world.

Seymour designed the hospitable and comfortable tract home living room, with a hallway leading to the bedrooms and a partially visible kitchen, though it’s apparent from the furnishings that a lot of warmth was not the hallmark of this shattered family’s life through the years. Evelyn Briggs, like many deserted parents, is looking not for love but for pity. She gets neither through her machinations that only build walls.

“Independence,” Gnu Theatre, 10426 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood; Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends May 26. $15-$20; (818) 508-5344. Running time: 2 hours.