STAGE REVIEW : Telling the Obvious in ‘Old Boy’

One character’s intense affection for “La Forza Del Destino” may be more than coincidence in A. R. Gurney’s “The Old Boy.” It is at the very least symbolic of events in Gurney’s latest vignette of WASP life in action, the West Coast premiere of which opened Saturday at the Old Globe Theatre’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage in Balboa Park.

The “force of destiny,” here tightly interwoven with the force of nature and one’s inability to escape either, is what this graceful but slender play is all about.

An innocent return to his old prep school by a politician who’s a candidate for the governorship of his New England state triggers a predictably unexpected series of events. When our world-weary politico, Sam, arrives to deliver a commencement address at his alma mater, we discover two things: that Sam is teetering on the brink of irresolution and has returned here in search of personal refreshment at the well, and that his former school chum Perry, the “new boy” for whom Sam served as mentor--or “old boy”--during his student years, has died under rather murky circumstances.

Sam had lost contact with Perry over the years, and begins to put the pieces of Perry’s life and death together when Perry’s mother, Harriet, and widow, Alison, arrive at the school with different versions of Perry’s death and different ambitions for a fitting memorial.

What unravels (rather than unfolds) is a sometimes acrimonious, sometimes rueful tale that broadcasts its developments minutes before they happen. This has the unsettling and guaranteed effect of defusing any possible surprise.

Since Alison was once courted by the womanizing Sam, whose private life is currently in shambles, it also leaves room for just enough romantic complication. And as Sam is forced to look at what really happened to Perry, a young man of blurred sexual identity who fought hard to live by society’s rules and failed, Sam must confront the role he may have played in Perry’s downfall--as well as the quality of his own life.

What we get is a personal epiphany play obtained at the shrine of friendship, along with a facile view of the scourge of AIDS catching up to life in the rarefied halls of New England’s most elitist and hidebound institutions.

Were it not such an obvious secret one would hesitate to reveal it, but obviousness is the trouble with this “Old Boy.” It is doggedly formulaic, from its reliance on tried-and-true flashbacks down to the very toes of its standard-issue subordinate characters.

There is Bud (Rob Neukirch), the icily business-like aide to Sam, whose own lawyerly ambitions brook no human frailty and render him disagreeably impatient with Sam’s wavering resolve. And there is Dexter (Franklin Cover), a foolish Polonius and old school don invented strictly, it would seem, to crank out expository bait. Neither has an original bone in his body.

In contrast to the text’s predictability, this Old Globe production is briskly and intelligently directed by Paul Benedict and has a regally conceived performance by Christopher Collet as the hapless Perry at its center. In a jumble of tragic emotion that skillfully vacillates between excessive torment and uptight restraint, Collet is able to convey the depth of his sexual confusion without ever reducing it to simplistic anguish.

John Getz’s Sam is a close second as the sincere friend who wants to help yet inadvertently compounds the damage. He is particularly fine in the second act climax, an emotional public moment of confession undermined only by the fact that we’ve seen it coming for too long.

Rosemary Murphy’s monster mother Harriet is careful to reveal herself dollop by dollop, but again, she holds no mystery as written and therefore not much as performed, no matter how well calibrated she is by the actress.

Harriet Hall is a somewhat unsympathetic Alison, conveying as much bitterness as insight as Perry’s angry, emotionally battered and cynical widow.

Production values are up to the usual standards of the restricted Cassius Carter space, remaining simple yet amply suggestive in Kent Dorsey’s subtle scenic design. Would that the playwright had delivered half as subtle a play. “The Old Boy” is mundane Gurney. It may be contending with lofty issues of nature and destiny, but in the end it does so on a disappointingly minor scale.

‘The Old Boy’

Franklin Cover: Dexter

Rob Neukirch: Bud

John Getz: Sam

Rosemary Murphy: Harriet

Christopher Collet: Perry

Harriet Hall: Alison

An Old Globe Theatre presentation of the West Coast premiere of a play by A. R. Gurney. Director Paul Benedict. Sets and lights Kent Dorsey. Costumes Christine Dougherty. Sound Jeff Ladman. Stage manager Peter Van Dyke.