STAGE REVIEW : ‘Peace’ Starkly Confronts Range War

The farmer and the cowman should be friends, wrote Oscar Hammerstein II. But they’re far from it in Robert Hummer’s “Peace in the Valley” at the Cast Theatre in Hollywood.

“Peace” dramatizes an Old West range war--not one of the more familiar stage subjects. Movies have the edge in this area, as they can show us the wide expanses of the range itself.

Still, Hummer can depict a home on the range--where seldom is heard an encouraging word. This particular home is in the thick of the fray.

On one side are the bad guys: rancher Drake (Nicholas Love) and his private sheriff and crony Charly (Gregory Wagrowski). They stare balefully at the chief good guy, Drake’s brother Seth (John Diehl). He fled the ranch years ago but has now returned from his life with the Indians and proposes peace among all parties.

Nominally in the middle is Lorraine (Ann Hearn), who is Drake’s wife and Charly’s sister. But before long, it becomes clear that her true calling is as Seth’s soul mate and lover.

The confrontation is stark and initially compelling. The tiny space (another grubby little room from Cast resident designer Andy Daley) becomes a pressure cooker where Manifest Destiny clashes with the politically correct.

Drake and Charly are as cruel and venal as characters can get before teetering into caricature. Pacifist Seth specifically cites Jesus Christ as his model, but a more recent archetype also comes to mind: Dances With Wolves.

The potential overkill is held at bay for much of the play by unsettling ellipses in the dialogue, flashes of bitter humor, foreboding pauses--and by director Dani Minnick’s cast. Hearn, playing the one character who has somewhat ambivalent feelings, is especially fascinating, with her long neck, serrated glances and plain talk. It’s wonderful to see Hearn and Wagrowski, who were mainstays of Los Angeles Theatre Center’s company, back in action.

Eventually, however, the talk becomes repetitive, the underlining too obvious. There are not enough shades of gray, nor hardly any attempts to explain why these sets of siblings split into such different camps. This might not matter within the mythic context of a wide-screen spectacle, or within the more intense framework of a shorter play. But the grim tragedy that unfolds here is a bit too pre-packaged to sweep us completely away.

That’s despite the exemplary music and sound design of Bill Gable, whose recorded overture is a paragon of masterful mood-setting.

* “Peace in the Valley,” Cast Theatre, 804 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood, Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends March 22. $12. (213) 462-0265. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.