STAGE REVIEWS : Playing Games in ‘Veronica’s Room’ : Depravity runs rampant in Ira Levin’s latest work. The characters are a feast of sick psychology, and the performers in Golden West’s production gorge themselves.

Playwright Ira Levin has a devious mind. In “Veronica’s Room,” now playing in the Actors Playbox at Golden West College, he coolly unravels a nightmare of deception so corrupt that each layer peeled away reveals a new and surprising abomination. As he did in his popular thriller “Deathtrap,” Levin plays a crafty game of psychology, pitting conventional reality and morality against an insidious force of mind-bending guile and rampant depravity.

An elderly couple who are caretakers of an old house in the suburbs of Boston persuade a young couple they’ve met in a restaurant to come home with them. They want the young woman, Susan, to impersonate someone long dead, a girl named Veronica, to whom they claim Susan bears an uncanny resemblance.

Posing as Veronica, Susan would meet with Veronica’s sister, now old and dying of cancer, who, in her sickness, imagines that Veronica is alive. The ailing sister is tortured by the desire to make up some old quarrel. Over the objections of her date, the adventurous Susan agrees to the interview with the old invalid. Dressed in Veronica’s clothes, her hair done up by the housekeeper, she excitedly rehearses her role in Veronica’s room, which has been eerily preserved since the real Veronica reportedly died of tuberculosis in the late 1930s.

The role-playing starts there and takes off at a gallop in the second act. The characters, who have secrets upon secrets and disguises under disguises, are a feast of sick psychology, and the performers in Golden West’s production gorge themselves, though they leave plenty of good stuff neglected on the table. Under the direction of Michael Stanley Weiss, however, the play moves smoothly and effectively around Michael Roseto’s good-looking set and, although the suspense stays at a low burn throughout the evening, the audience clearly enjoyed the revelatory plot twists as well as the histrionics provided by the quartet of actors.

As the young woman asked to impersonate the dead Veronica, Debbie Caceres-Gerber is particularly convincing, especially in her moment of frightened capitulation. She makes nothing of Susan’s thrill-seeking tendencies, but she is sweet and natural nonetheless. Eric Hansen and Tory Christopher are solid in their multiple roles, and Sara St. James absolutely chews the scenery as the twisted villainess.

There are a couple of times when director Weiss captures the stratified creepiness lurking in Levin’s script, as when the older man, struck by Susan’s resemblance to Veronica, suddenly approaches her with lecherous intentions not at all appropriate to the person he is pretending to be. But occasionally one wonders why a discerning young woman such as Susan doesn’t just snatch that phony wig off her tormentor’s head and expose the whole charade.

‘VERONICA’S ROOM’

A Golden West College Performing Arts presentation of Ira Levin’s mystery. Directed by Michael Stanley Weiss. With Sara St. James, Eric Hansen, Debbie Caceres-Gerber and Tory Christopher. Set by Michael Roseto. Lighting by Scott Williams. Costumes by Don Alt. Recommended for mature audiences. Performances Thursday through Sunday at 8 p.m. in the Actors Playbox, 15744 Golden West St., Huntington Beach. Tickets: $4. (714) 895-8378.