STAGE REVIEW : Out to Pasture : Production of acclaimed 1974 melodrama “The Sea Horse” comes up short.

At some point in the ‘80s, a lot of plays from the ‘60s began to feel dated. The same phenomenon is starting to happen in the ‘90s with plays from the ‘70s. Work seen then as so fresh has either lost its glow or has had too many imitators.

This week’s case in point: Edward J. Moore’s lauded 1974 melodrama for two actors, “The Sea Horse,” at Third Stage Theatre in Burbank. Otis L. Guernsey’s “Best Plays” survey of that year pegged Moore’s maiden voyage as a playwright as the best American play. It was the kind of drama born at Marshall W. Mason’s Circle Repertory Theatre: The intimate, usually two-person drama of intense needs in fundamental opposition. A lighter example is Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune” which at times is almost a tribute to “The Sea Horse.”

Like Frankie, Moore’s Gertrude (Barbara Allen) is overweight and working in the service industry, and resists a full-time male companion. Moore’s Harry (Richard De Munn) is more undeterred than Johnny. Yet both plays are less about how He Got That Woman than about why some women want to be alone.

A huge emotional weight, then, is on the shoulders of any actress who plays Gertrude, a weight that demands a powerful articulation of the fury of buried pain. With the right actress, Gertrude can single-handedly lift the whole play up.

Without this, “The Sea Horse” recedes to being a familiar male-female tug of war. Allen neither explores the wrenching potholes into which Gertrude has driven her life nor ever gives off the full aroma of attraction that Harry can’t resist. And De Munn falls short of suggesting the personal vacuum that only Gertrude can fill.

Where and When What: “The Sea Horse.” Where: Third Stage Theatre, 2811 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday. Through Sunday. Price: $12. Call: (213) 466-1767.