STAGE REVIEW : Seeking Shelter, Comfort at ‘Grandmother’s’

Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go. The wind “stings the toes and bites the nose,” but Grandma will wait for us, pumpkin pie in hand, forever and ever. Right?

The three grown-up grandchildren in Joanna M. Glass’ poignant “To Grandmother’s House We Go,” now in a burnished staging at the Colony’s Studio Theatre Playhouse, should know better. But they assume that Grandma’s big old house will offer all the comfort they need, whenever they need it.

Not far from Hartford, Conn., this house wasn’t just the site of their childhood Thanksgivings. It was their year-round home; their widowed mother Harriet (Toni Sawyer) moved back in with her parents at age 30--and she still lives there with their now-widowed Grandie (Kathryn Fuller) and Grandie’s widower brother Jared (Stuart Lancaster).

The grandchildren, returning home for Thanksgiving, want to make their return more permanent. Divorced Paul (Jonathan Palmer) is about to exit his big city career and remarry; he’d like to move in with his bride (Susan Savage) while they reconnoiter the territory. Beatrice (Melody Ryane), also divorced and still bitter that her ex-husband got custody of the kids, relies on the homestead for summers with her brood. Muffy (Tara Wolfe), whose own marital split is still in the courts, wants to heal at Grandie’s place instead of her own broken home in Baltimore.

But some members of the older generation are afraid that the constant succor they provide makes them suckers.

This setup easily could have sunk into fighting-family stereotypes. But Glass works at a higher level. Some of the dialogue is almost Chekhovian: brittle comedy on top, ironic rue below the surface. The play evokes an exquisite sense of the passage of time.

True, the first scene is top-heavy with exposition, and the second act opens with a verbal fusillade by Beatrice that seems slightly trumped-up.

A more serious problem is that Glass put on kid gloves in her treatment of Harriet, the sole representative of the middle generation. It’s easy to overlook Harriet; practically everyone in the family does, as she finally points out.

But there’s an element of hypocrisy in Harriet. Though she’s fervently opposed to her kids moving back in, she herself made exactly the same decision. Yet no one throws this in her face; her relationship with Grandie is curiously under-examined. Still, Sawyer--repeating a role she tackled at the now defunct Megaw Theatre in 1983--creates a magnificent stoic.

Director Scott Segall’s entire cast is superb. Fuller has a classic grandmother’s face: square and sensible, gracious but sometimes guarded. Despite the infirmities of age, she can easily dominate the family with a single raised eyebrow.

Ryane’s troubled Beatrice is a ball of anguish. But Sandra Kinder--as the dear old Irish housekeeper--and Savage’s boldly assertive Californian provide jocular relief as the only two related not by blood, but by their distaste for each other’s conventions. D. Silvio Volonte’s parlor looks lived-in and drafty; costumer Ted C. Giammona responds with plenty of sweaters.

* “To Grandmother’s House We Go,” Studio Theatre Playhouse, 1944 Riverside Drive, Los Angeles, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 29. $18-$20. (213) 665-3011. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.