STAGE REVIEW : ‘Darkness’--A Tesich Curiosity

It is slightly astonishing that a Steve Tesich play that opened on Broadway Feb. 28 of this year, receiving mixed but intriguing reviews, has surfaced in Los Angeles--not in a major venue, not in a medium-size house, but in one of the area’s more enterprising small theaters.

Tesich’s “The Speed of Darkness” found its way to the Gnu Theatre in North Hollywood with something like the speed of light. This could be construed as a lack of takers after a relatively short Broadway run. But the play, by the author of “Division Street” and the films “Breaking Away” and “Four Friends,” had in fact been done at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre almost two years before it hit New York. So you might say this is a new play that’s been around.

It’s not hard to see how “The Speed of Darkness” earned this curious status. It’s a curious piece--part mystery, part thriller, part morality play. It has some of Tesich’s cleanest and most perceptive writing, at once poetic and simple. It broadcasts its intentions and yet manages to create considerable suspense before delivering them on schedule. Secrets will out. Blood, we are told, will be shed.

This is a provocative, frustrating, sometimes mesmerizing play and, in this production, directed and designed by Gnu artistic director Jeff Seymour, oddly skewed. (“Skewed” is a word Tesich likes to roll around and pick apart.)

Set in Sioux Falls, “Darkness” tracks the home life of Joe (James Handy), a Vietnam war hero with a wife (Beege Barkett) and a daughter (Lori Moose), who is unexpectedly nominated to be South Dakota’s Man of the Year.

This heaping of honor triggers erratic behavior in Joe, a builder with what seems like a good business and a happy life. The picture is scrambled further when Joe’s Vietnam buddy Lou (Michael McGuire), whose life Joe saved, shows up unannounced at the door.

Lou is homeless. He calls himself an MIA--”Missing in America,” a gentle nonperson who left his real life behind in Vietnam and was arrested once at Washington’s Vietnam War Memorial for trying to add his name to the wall with a can opener. He has been following a sort of traveling “Son of Wall” memorial around the country and Sioux Falls is a stop on the road.

But Joe and Lou also share an uneasy secret that dates to their post-Vietnam years. It involves a mesa just outside town and Lou’s presence is a reminder that only compounds Joe’s discomfort.

Events tumble in all directions, including a subplot and one secret too many that involve daughter Mary. While the first act builds with reasonable momentum, the second, despite some terse, exquisite writing, has a harder time finding a credible ending. The build-up is so broad that it can’t live up to expectation.

Plenty here reminds us of Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” or Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” Yet in Lou, Tesich has created an eloquent archetype that speaks to us soft and clear. McGuire may be a touch too clean and unscruffy in the part but, armed with Tesich’s best insights, he makes a wonder of this man--enigmatic, aching, tender and amazingly generous.

Barkett is a Mother Knows Best type, fully at ease with herself, and Moose, as the loving daughter, is a model high-school grad--wise and strong and not a simp. At first the lanky, ungainly Gaines, who is difficult to understand, seems offbeat casting for boyfriend Eddie, but he surprises us in a devastating confrontation with Joe.

As Joe, Handy seems to have the toughest problems and the hardest time. Joe is unclearly defined as written, unsympathetic and saddled with contradictions. His violent drunk seems a revelation to his wife Anne and yet they’ve been married for 18 years.

A big window frames the fateful mesa, which just looks like a bad painting in Seymour’s set. It would have been far more mysterious left unseen by the audience, so imagination could take over.

In a way, that encapsulates the major difficulty with this script, which vacillates between concealment and revelation. At the moment, “Darkness” is worth seeing chiefly for the legitimacy of McGuire’s performance--perhaps because his character has an empirical right to this play’s dysfunctional heart.

* “The Speed of Darkness,” Gnu Theatre, 10426 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Jan. 12. $15-$20; (818) 508-5344. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

‘The Speed of Darkness’

James Handy: Joe

Beege Barkett: Anne

Lori Moose: Mary

Courtney Gaines: Eddie

Michael McGuire: Lou

West Coast premiere of a play by Steve Tesich. Executive producer Greg Leonard. Producers Jeff Seymour, Wendy Wilson. Director Jeff Seymour. Sets Jeff Seymour. Sound Jeff Seymour. Lights Lawrence Oberman. Costumes Sharon Katz. Production stage manager Rick Starr.