STAGE REVIEW : Questions Abound in ‘Oxford’

There is a rumor in the land that if you take well-known historical figures, an old dispute that concerns them and put humanizing language in their mouths, a case could be made for a historical fiction that might speak to us today.

Perhaps, but not the one made in “Oxford’s Will” at the Colony Studio Theatre. All we get here is an ordinary little comedy with a collection of characters who happen to transact their business in ersatz Elizabethan. They shed no new light on anything historical or current, least of all the matter of who wrote Shakespeare’s plays: Shakespeare or the Earl of Oxford.

Jerry Fey’s play is so slender that it’s hard to get worked up about its failure to present us with anything more solid or arresting than windy anatomical humor--sometimes bawdy, more often merely gastrointestinal--that’s offensive chiefly for lacking the drive of a biting story behind it.

We are witness to a few domestic scenes wherein, more by omission than commission, an aging, earthbound Earl (Charles Thomas Murphy), exiled from Elizabeth’s court, deceives his young disciple Will into believing that he might one day be recalled to London.

This faint promise of bright lights is suddenly enhanced by the unscheduled arrival of a baroness with a long German name (Barbara Beckley) who has designs of her own on the earl. Though deviously, these include getting him back into the queen’s favor. Add to this household a pair of servants, one shrewd (Bonita Friedericy), one doltish (John Kennedy) and you have . . . not much of a play.

Unanswered questions: Why is Will (Gil Johnson) staying with the earl? What might be the nature of their relationship (beyond literary and platonic)? Why is the court important? Who is this baroness? Matters of authorship rarely come up and time is spent chiefly getting mileage from coarse humor.

Friedericy and Kennedy are unfairly limited by the extraneousness of the roles they play. The very fine Beckley brightens things by turning her scheming Baroness into a lively cartoon, and Johnson is a personable Will. But Murphy is tentative and unexciting as the pivotal Earl, making the holes in Fey’s script and the fakery of the neo-Shakespearean dialogue all too painfully apparent.

“Will” is a disappointing choice for this theater, and for talented director Jules Aaron who seems powerless to overcome the text’s abiding shallowness. The handsome Elizabethan set by designer Susan Gratch and good lighting by J. Kent Inasy are a good deal better than the play deserves.

“Oxford’s Will,” Colony Studio Theatre, 1944 Riverside Drive, Silver Lake. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends June 28. $15-$20; (213) 665-3011. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.