‘Roads to Home’ Takes Foote in Other Directions

Horton Foote’s “The Roads to Home,” at Gardner Stage, may be the playwright’s most disjointed play. This production, directed by Paul Brennan, does him the favor of mostly putting it all back together with few noticeable seams.

Foote’s fictional town, Harrison, Tex., where many of his plays are set, is still the focus in “Roads.” But this time he writes of Harrison expatriates, or at least some of those who have moved on to Houston, and some who have found their way to a mental hospital in Austin. They all glance over their shoulders at the roads that have led them away from their home and their emotional security.

If anyone can be considered a central character, it’s Annie Gayle Long (D.J. Harner), married to a Houstonite in the produce business, and not quite right since the birth of her second child. She has quirks of memory in which nothing is as it really is, referring to her children as her brother and sister, reliving fantasy moments in instant replay. Harner’s charm, her attention to what is only implied, and the gentle humor she finds in Annie, redeem a sketchily drawn character who appears only in the first and third acts.

The first two acts concern Annie and her commitment to the sanitarium in Austin, but put more emphasis on Mabel Votaugh (Bobbi Holtzman), who sometimes keeps tabs on fellow Harrison refugees. Mabel usually tries to keep something interesting going on in spite of her dull husband, Jack (Martin Schnitzer), and the intrusions of giddy neighbor Vonnie Hayhurst (Anita Jesse).

Holtzman, Schnitzer and Jesse, David Cowgill (as Annie’s confused husband) and understudy David Macready (as Vonnie’s errant husband) disappear after Act II, but their performances are touching, honest and authentic. Jesse is notable for eliciting sympathy for a woman who is weak and easily destroyed after a curious trip to Harrison during which her husband finds a fresh romance.

Act III takes place four years later, and seems somehow superfluous, except to extend Foote’s road map with some new roads. Terrence Atkins, Dane Ince and Gary Lee Reed are patients (two from Harrison) who all seem to have the same affliction that detoured Annie, and the tale wanders away from the strengths and insight that were signposts of the first two acts.

* “The Roads to Home,” Gardner Stage, 1501 N. Gardner St., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 13. $12; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Search for Heritage in ‘Eight Miles’

Stuart Gold’s family is Christian Scientist, but a fractured relationship with a woman who wants to marry only a Jew drives him to re-examine his parents’ conversion from Jewry. It’s an intriguing idea that is only met halfway.

The Golds live “Eight Miles From New York,” in New Jersey, and the action really begins with his father’s fatal, and unattended, heart attack. The play is basically a comedy-drama about beliefs and their social implications, watered down with too much direct narration and too much concentration on Stuart’s romantic failures. And then there’s the cop-out coincidence of his ex’s engagement to an Italian who was buying a house from Mr. Gold before his demise.

The sitcom aura that surrounds the play would work better if the theme of Stuart’s search for a heritage took center stage. Avner Garbi’s direction at West Coast Ensemble, though fluid and interesting, isn’t able to give depth to a script that’s more than eight miles from where it should be.

David Youse is excellent as Stuart, a sort of Woody Allen nebbish, whose dreams are as upsetting as his reality, and Annie Korzen and Diane Shaver are on target as the mother and sister who won’t let him get away with a thing. Tony Pandolfo shines as Stuart’s irascible father, whose spirit plagues his son until the funeral.

* “Eight Miles From New York,” West Coast Ensemble, 6240 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Dec. 13. $15; (213) 871-1052. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Heifner’s ‘Heartbreak’ Strong but Stale Stuff

Playwright Jack Heifner uses an intriguing gimmick in “Heartbreak,” at the World Theatre. He lets his characters flash back over their relationship with recently deceased Jason by holding a “crazy kind of memorial service,” in which they re-enact meetings and conversations with Jason in the period leading up to his death.

Jason had AIDS, but may not have died of it. After a thwarted suicide, Jason tried to kill his unfeeling parents, who had him arrested, at which point he was brutally beaten in his jail cell. No one knows what caused his death. It’s strong stuff, and Heifner’s manner of telling it, fascinating.

The problems are that nothing new is brought to an old story of friends figuring out what happened, and--despite Milton Justice’s well-paced direction--almost all the actors look as though they’re at a first rehearsal, rattling off lines with no more feeling or meaning than words fresh off the page. Only Spencer Garrett as Jason seems to have found something inside his character.

* “Heartbreak,” World Theatre, 6543 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 19. $10-$12; (213) 962-3771. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.