STAGE REVIEWS : A One-Alarm ‘Foxfire’ : Fullerton Civic Light Opera’s Production Is Equal Parts Compelling Intimacy and Flat Passages

Annie Nations lives, rather happily, in a haunted house. Husband Hector has been dead for five years, but there he is, a ghost offering continuity and comfort.

“Foxfire,” now at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in an uneven production by the Fullerton Civic Light Opera Company, is all about what keeps people together--and what they have to face when it’s time to move on.

Annie, almost 80, spent a lifetime with cantankerous, wise Hector in their Appalachian home and isn’t quite ready to give up on him. His death? Merely a formality; memories are strong, sometimes stronger than reality, easily conjured when you’re still in love.

Hector hangs around, just as he always did, wooing Annie, keeping her in line, recalling some of their best (and worst) moments together.

We can feel that connection between Annie and Hector at the Muckenthaler, mainly because Margaret Silbar and Stu Levin understand the characters and aren’t nervous about getting into their foibles, both charming and charmless.

They had moments of compelling intimacy at Friday’s opening performance, but these small victories were met by an equal number of flat, compromised passages.

Director H. Carl Nelson’s pacing was calm and deliberate, clearly designed to generate a reflective, pastoral ambience, quietly trying to evoke America’s past and our idea of the good, honest people that inhabit it.

This approach is especially effective in a few key scenes, as when Annie remembers the death of her husband and feels such pain when she loses one of the quarters she wants to put on his eyes before burial. The moment is elegiac, where Nelson’s direction and Silbar’s acting join nicely.

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But there are vague and unresolved patches that don’t involve us the same way. Sean McGuirk is a pretty good actor, but he doesn’t always clarify the complicated, remorseful connection between Dillard, their son, and Hector, who died before Dillard could make peace with him.

We also want to know more about why Dillard, now a popular country singer, took Hector’s folk songs and turned them into commercial successes; we want to know how this makes him feel, whether he thinks this trivialization is a betrayal.

“Foxfire,” which was adapted by Susan Cooper and Hume Cronyn from a book of stories gathered by a high-school class in rural Georgia, settles on Dillard and Annie when he comes to talk her into selling the home and coming to live with him in Florida.

A peppy realtor (David Kieran) has offered a tidy sum ($100,000), and Dillard needs his mother with him. His wife just left him and there’re the kids to take care of. Besides, he’s worried about her being alone; all that talk about Hector makes him nervous.

The play, which was a hit on Broadway with Cronyn and wife Jessica Tandy in the lead roles before it became a TV movie in 1987, isn’t much more complicated than that.

When Annie finally realizes that she can leave with her son, it’s not so much a revelation as an acceptance that life provides new paths for us all the time. Silbar’s stoic face, lit well by Steven Wolff Craig’s economical and sensitive lighting, reveals that awareness.

* “Foxfire,” Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton. Thursday-Sunday (with outdoor dinner) and Tuesday and Wednesday (no dinner) at 8:15 p.m. (dinner at 7 p.m.). Through Sept. 4. $20 (without dinner) and $28 and $29 (with dinner). (714) 879-1732. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Margaret Silbar: Annie Nations

Stu Levin: Hector Nations

David Kieran: Prince Carpenter

Shannon Sturges: Holly Burrell

Sean McGuirk: Dillard Nations

Michael Potter: Doctor

A Fullerton Civic Light Opera Company production of Susan Cooper and Hume Cronyn’s play. Directed by H. Carl Nelson. Set and lighting by Steven Wolff Craig. Costumes by Ambra Wakefield. Sound by John Ostby.