STAGE REVIEW : Moral, Ethical Storm Rages in ‘Golds’ : Despite flaws early on, Jonathan Tolins’ first venture into major theater is a rich, intelligent play

Just when it was beginning to look as if the Pasadena Playhouse was going to devote itself to complacent comedies and other crowd-pleasers, it comes up with Jonathan Tolins’ “Twilight of the Golds.”

“Golds,” which opened Sunday, is a flawed piece with some seriously underwritten characters. It has a couple of long monologues that need cutting. It has early exposition that all but broadcasts the trouble ahead.

But . . . it also has a couple of short monologues that will knock your socks off. And the small craft warnings of the beginning don’t begin to describe the magnitude of the moral and ethical storm that will eventually blow over that stage, engulfing not only the Gold family, but also pulling the audience into its vortex.

Tolins, whose earlier plays (“The Climate,” “Lives of the Neo-Modern Fang People”) have been seen in small area theaters, has taken on major issues for this first foray into major theater. And he’s done it deceptively.

“Twilight of the Golds” starts out as family sitcom. Suzanne Gold-Stein and husband, Rob, are about to celebrate their third anniversary. They make upper-middle class small talk while waiting for the Golds to show up for drinks: mom Phyllis, dad Walter, brother David.

Playwright Tolins soothes us with marital banter, gets plenty of comic mileage from the New York building’s intercom system and continues the familial--and familiar--jokiness into the living-room conviviality. Happy family at play.

Or is it? Son David is an opera buff and struggling set designer who also happens to be gay. His relatives are well aware of it and profess to love him dearly, but would just as soon not discuss it.

When Suzanne announces that she’s pregnant (joy, joy), Rob, a specialist in genetic research, can’t wait for her to benefit from a newly developed kind of amniocentesis--a test so all-encompassing that his own Orthodox Jewish father has called him a Nazi for being a party to such refinement in genetic selectivity.

Red alert . This is where Tolins only too clearly broadcasts that the going is about to get tough. The test Suzanne submits to raises an issue that remains hypothetical for the time being, because such advanced technology has yet to occur. But the development is not implausible and plunges this family, top to bottom, into a forced re-examination of its emotions, ethics, morality and values.

Hard stuff that Tolins handles with directness and ineffable grace. The sitcom turns into a dark but deeply human agony over a raft of complex issues. And the cruel ending leaves the families in fragments at a devastating point of no return.

Thanks to David’s passion for opera, the play’s themes are not so much intertwined as enhanced by the parallels he draws--again and again--with Wagner’s Ring Cycle (which is also where the piece borrows the word-play of its title).

This is emulated by Martin Aronstein’s lighting, which between scenes suggests a twilight of the gods, and John Iacovelli’s young-marrieds’ apartment (furnished, David tells us, “from pages 30-34 of the Ikea catalogue”). It loses its back wall to reveal Siegfried and Brunnhilde’s mythological realm (which looks a bit too much like Arizona). The wall returns only when reality sets in.

Tom Alderman’s staging has drawn impeccably on the considerable talents of a company that makes its difficult transitions seem easy. Raphael Sbarge’s David is the conscience of the piece, a young man--at once vulnerable, driving and endearing--who manages, in spite of his own pain, never to lapse into sentimentality.

The other fully developed character is mother Phyllis, a woman who has learned to cope with what’s on her plate and is played by the eloquent Judith Scarpone as far more than the addled middle-aged housewife we meet at the beginning. Her monologue on the loss of beauty and simplicity from our lives is shattering.

David Groh’s Walter, on the other hand, is so stereotypical and underwritten as a Jewish father that when pressed for a reaction to his son’s sexual identity, the harsh answers seem to come from a man to whom we have not been properly introduced.

The same, by and large, goes for Rob (Michael Spound), written more as a mouthpiece than a person--though he too has an affecting monologue, far more revealing of the man he is than anything that has led up to that moment.

It falls on Suzanne (Jodi Thelen) to be the most schizophrenic character. Written as a Jewish princess, nothing prepares her (or us) for the turnaround she’s forced to make. Because she’s so central to the issues, however, some reworking of the character should occur if the play is to move on to higher ground. And move it must.

Tolins has unhesitatingly combined knotty questions without backing away from painful answers. Flaws and all, this is a rich, intelligent, articulate piece of work that speaks volumes to matters that are paramount to us today. This isn’t the first time the Playhouse has put the new work of a local playwright on its main stage, but it’s the first time it has done it with one of such unmistakable promise.

* “The Twilight of the Golds,” Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 21. $31.50; (818) 356-PLAY, (213) 480-3232. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes. Raphael Sbarge: David Gold

Jodi Thelen: Suzanne Gold-Stein

Michael Spound: Rob Stein

Judith Scarpone: Phyllis Gold

David Groh: Walter Gold

A presentation of the Pasadena Playhouse in association with Theatre Corporation of America and Charles H. Duggan. Director Tom Alderman. Playwright Jonathan Tolins. Sets John Iacovelli. Lights Martin Aronstein. Costumes Michael Abbott. Sound Jonathan Deans. Production stage manager Arthur Gaffin. Stage manager Daniel Munson.