THEATER BEAT : ‘Cottage’: Evil Woman’s Destructive Path

Nina Burkee Andrews is coming to visit her parents, and she’s a mess. We learn from Mom and Dad that she has been a problem since she was a child, with tantrums that grew in ferocity as she reached adulthood. Now Nina’s coming home to stay.

In Julie Gilbert’s drama “The Cottage,” at Theatre 40, Nina’s decision is met with one her parents have made. They’re selling the Martha’s Vineyard house and its adjoining cottage, and moving to Florida.

What with her divorce, and her desperate need for her childhood roots, Nina sets off on a tantrum that lasts until the final curtain. She’s not a happy camper. She insinuates herself back into the cottage as a patient of the therapist who, along with her architect husband, has bought the house. Nina also insinuates herself into the husband’s arms.

“The Cottage” may give away some of its secrets before their time, but Gilbert knows how to put together its slowly unfolding puzzle, how to build suspense and, considering its surprising and heartbreaking ending--which won’t be divulged--how to use a linear story to plant questions that gnaw after the final curtain.

Director Flora Plumb has a subtle knack for keeping the script’s secrets until their time to blossom. The sometimes light tone of her direction makes the heavier moments more impressive. Tom Brown’s realistic multiple setting gives Plumb an interesting canvas for her intricate and varied staging.

Barbara Sammeth is marvelously two-sided as Nina, sweet as plum pudding as she slowly takes control of those around her, gratingly sharp and edgy when crossed. It’s easy to see how the new owners fall for her line, to their eventual sorrow.

Valerie Karasek and James Bartz, as the uncomfortable couple she divides, are understated and finely detailed, in excellently contrasting colors to Nina’s moods and powers of persuasion, and Robert Nadder and Dinah Anne Rogers have the right resigned fatalism when confronted with their daughter’s evil.

* “The Cottage,” Theatre 40, 241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 8 p.m. Ends May 2. $14-$17; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours.