THEATER REVIEW / ‘HIDE AND SEEK’ : Thriller Puts Chill on Country Living : The play is paced briskly enough to skirt the story’s absurdities and is well augmented with atmospheric music and sound effects.

Good evening.

Our story tonight deals with the finer things in life--suspicion, terror and, of course, murder--served up country-style by Carpinteria’s Seaside Theatre Company in a spine-tingling thriller innocuously titled “Hide and Seek.”

If you’ve ever longed to forsake the rat race of the city for the simple charms of rural quiescence, you just may reconsider that idyllic dream after meeting the Crawfords, a pair of ex-Manhattanites whose urban sophistication has ill-prepared them for the unsettling events they encounter in the remote farmhouse they’ve recently purchased.

The house--one of those creaky, ramshackle dwellings that cause the locals to develop instant laryngitis whenever the conversation turns to its past history--has been, we soon learn, deserted for 10 years.

Yet it’s an ideal retreat for pregnant Jennifer Crawford (Vicki Howie) and her husband, Richard (Robert Jones). The city is no place to raise a child, or so he pompously tells her. “I had to get you out of there--you refused to slow down.”

So, while her starched corporate spouse spends his days commuting back to the office, Jennifer busies herself supervising the house’s restoration and awaits the imminent arrival of the little one.

The periodic appearances of a mysterious little girl playing in their yard at first arouse only Jennifer’s curiosity. But her inquiries provoke extreme reactions from their nearest neighbors, the high-strung, wild-eyed Elly Bart (ClaireMarie Ghelardi) and her surly, abusive husband (Allen Raichelle). It seems the child that Jennifer keeps seeing matches the description of the Barts’ daughter, who vanished five years earlier and is presumed dead.

Yet Elly’s hysterical proclamation that her missing daughter has returned from the grave is accepted by everyone except Richard, the picky realist. That Jennifer might have been seeing the Barts’ surviving twin daughter (Elizabeth Heller) is never seriously considered--only one of the unfathomable mysteries in this endearingly implausible script by Lezley Havard.

Far more troublesome than possible supernatural visitations is the poor caliber of domestic help that the Crawfords get from their featherbedding handyman (Lane Garrett) and tight-lipped maid (Sunni Thomas), both annoyingly prone to exchanging ominous glances while avoiding their chores.

Picture “Green Acres” meets “The Shining,” and you’ve got the play’s general effect.

While very much a community theater outing, the Seaside production is not without its charms. Director Jim Sirianni has commendably staged the piece without a trace of smirking, paced it briskly enough to skirt the story’s absurdities, and augmented it with atmospheric music and sound effects.

The performers are generally agreeable--particularly Howie, who keeps Jennifer sympathetic despite some unsavory character revelations, and Ghelardi, whose weirdness is nicely rendered.

Less successful was Benjamin Liberman as Richard’s deadbeat brother Tony, who drops in for dinner with his steadfastly peripheral girlfriend (Kay-Lynne Schaller) in tow.

Tony’s perpetual nasal whine drives Richard to an outburst of impassioned acting in their confrontation scene. Liberman seems to have made other enemies as well, judging from the actor’s puzzling disappearance just after the show.

However, this last mystery was quickly solved by the local constabulary, who took your humble reviewer into custody on suspicion of foul play.

You’ll be happy to know the evidence was purely circumstantial, and with any luck I should be released on a legal technicality in plenty of time for our next review.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“Hide and Seek” plays through June 13, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sunday, June 13, at 3 p.m. at the Carpinteria Arts and Lecture Center. Tickets are $6-$8. For reservations or further information, call 684-6380.