STAGE REVIEW : Predictable ‘Spine’ Looks Made for TV

As death approaches, 11-year-old Christy’s spine starts to collapse.

But it’s another spine--the one that holds together Christy’s family--that most interests playwright Bill C. Davis in “Spine,” at the Cast Theatre in Hollywood.

We never see or hear Christy. On his last day on Earth, he’s stuck in bed, facing away from the audience, unable to talk. Instead, we watch the other members of his family and his doctor, as they react to Christy’s final flutters.

This focus on the family instead of the patient superficially separates “Spine” from many of the TV dramas about similar cases. On screen, they would probably show us the kid.

Still, Davis’ play retains the unmistakable look of a TV workshop.

Meredith Baxter plays the kind of role that she is famous for on TV. The play is just about the perfect length for a two-hour TV movie, allowing for commercials. And it would clearly look more at home on a soundstage than on the cramped stage of the Cast.

Although “Spine” is mildly moving, the question inevitably arises in the mind of the would-be paying customer: Why not wait for the finished product?

Davis’ dialogue sounds utterly realistic--too realistic, in fact, to endow the play with genuine stage presence or to magnify its concerns into something that transcends this particular situation. (One might interpolate something more cosmic by literally interpreting Christy’s name--minus the y --but there is no evidence that Davis had this in mind, and it’s just as well.)

The surface realism of the play also leads to questions about why an affluent Connecticut horse-country family lives in such a tiny space--an issue that wouldn’t arise on screen, or in a play more explicitly stylized for the stage.

From the beginning of the play, Baxter--as the mom--provides most of the spine in this family. As she waits on Christy, she must also cope with the fact that the other members of the family are wrapped up in severe denial.

Her husband (Richard Gilliland) is the worst case. He virtually barricades himself in his bedroom, where he obsessively polishes his shoes and starts making funeral arrangements--anything to avoid facing Christy himself.

Christy’s older brother (Mackenzie Astin) begins drinking and driving, while his sister (Miriam Parrish) pretends that she will be able to participate in a horse show tomorrow, despite the probability that Christy will die tonight.

The dramatic spine of the play is supposed to arise from Mom’s gradual realization that she has to toughen up even more in order to save her family from complete collapse. Baxter virtually has a patent on this kind of role, and she does it well, barring a few unduly muffled lines. But since she is already the toughest one on stage, as well as the kindest and most sensitive, her struggle seems somewhat secondary.

It’s her husband who has to travel the furthest psychological distance. A pilot who spends too much time away from his family, who doesn’t even speak to his older son, he feels intense guilt because he promised the dying Christy that he wouldn’t die. He rails against the medical expertise that has failed his son, but he inwardly rails against himself as well.

Gilliland etches him in sure strokes, but the character feels vaguely underwritten, as if Davis hasn’t quite come to grips with him.

Davis’ direction fills in a few details. Astin makes a terrific troubled teen-ager, and Parrish gives her lines the right hint of young-teen brattiness.

Kirtana Kumar plays the oh-so-understanding doctor. That she is from India is apparently supposed to signal her intimacy with Eastern attitudes toward death as well as Western medical technology. But she is most engaging when she briefly forgets her nobility and banters with Baxter in a lighthearted conversation about the two of them escaping to South America together.

Alexandra Rubinstein’s set is handsome, if ill-proportioned, and the other design elements are in their predictable places.

* “Spine,” Cast Theatre, 800 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 3 and 7 p.m. Ends Nov. 3. $17.50-$20. (213) 462-0265. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.