Theater : A Little Short of ‘Heaven’

For all of its declared and undeclared ambitions, John Glore’s new play at South Coast Repertory’s Second Stage, “The Company of Heaven,” aims for the stars but touches down just slightly above the horizon line.

It’s not a crash landing exactly. The play is entirely too genteel and urbane for that. But it is not a particularly graceful landing either. “Heaven” is one of those ambitious pieces that wants to be something it is not. Intended as a play about metaphysical transcendence, it is, in form and structure, utterly earthbound.

We are dealing here with the childless, middle-aged wife of a career American Air Force colonel based in England, who chooses to believe that the strange phenomena seen coincidentally by one of her husband’s men and by a young divorcee who slings hash at the local McDonald’s may be “real” extraterrestrial manifestations.

The problem is given away early by the very terminology the author elects to use. What Glore and his characters call visions are, at best, sightings . And, while the divorcee Julie (Nike Doukas), insists that the creatures she thinks she saw in the woods looked like fairies, she also reports her cow missing after the incident. The story of the young airman, Charlie (Mikael Salazar), is more convincing, partly because it is more skeptical and partly because, as an amateur astronomer, he better understands scientific imprecision.

The chief reason Air Force wife Joanna (Lisa Banes) is intrigued by these stories is that she herself experienced a strange, unexplained pull from the sky at about the time that the others had their alleged extraterrestrial moments.

Her decision to pursue the possible truth of their stories against her husband’s wishes and in the face of some quite unpersuasive arguments by a military debunker named Karla (Peggy Blow, vainly trying to make this unbelievable character believable), leads to some facing of personal truth, such as Joanna’s boredom with the rigidities of her military-wife life.

There is also the introduction of a seductive semi-opportunist named Prosper Blondlot (“Is that French?”--”No, it’s phony”) played with customary flair by Nicholas Hormann. But these are exceedingly modest achievements for a play that started out with such high metaphysical ambitions. It only manages a pedestrian rendering of the theory of uncertainty and settles for a humdrum resolution to a humdrum midlife crisis.

In pursuit of his higher goals, however, Glore makes the error of dressing up small emotions in lofty raiment, which soon makes it evident that his emperor has no clothes. He burdens his action with sexual attractions and/or suggestiveness that neither advances the plot nor adds dimension to it. The dialogue is occasionally amusing but rarely rises above the naturalism of TV dramedy, charging events with phony suspense and exchanges with the dated, dreary civility of “Father Knows Best.”

Interconnected yet separate telephone conversations by three characters on stage, each with other people, smacks more of gimmickry than skill. Perhaps by virtue of his role as South Coast Rep’s literary manager (he has also written plays for its Young Conservatory and a short play for Actors’ Theatre of Louisville), Glore uses theatrical device with self-conscious stitchery. All of the play’s seams are showing at all times.

Norman Snow, a graduate of that famous first-year Juilliard School acting class (along with Patty Lupone and Kevin Kline) and so memorable in the title role of the Acting Company’s 1975 “Edward II,” is hugely undertaxed in the blank role of Joanna’s one-dimensional husband. So for that matter is Hormann as the dapper Blondlot.

Banes is stuck with the impossible task of making Joanna credible and is forced by the text and by director William Ludel’s self-defensive direction into falsely pregnant pauses and long pensive looks that don’t replace substance.

Only Salazar and Doukas have almost plausible and ingratiating characters that they deliver persuasively, in spite of being hampered here and there by Glore’s taste for useless decoration. Fewer teacups and less sympathy, please.

The physical production is simple and adequate, with solid design work by John Iacovelli (set), Shigeru Yaji (costumes) and Doc Ballard (lights). But the play is, for the moment, highly inflated. If it meant, as indicated, to give us insights into the essential relationship of wonder, faith and science, it manages only to tell us not show us, and in prosaic terms at that.

* “The Company of Heaven,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Ends Dec. 5. $15-$33; (714) 957-4033. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Lisa Banes: Joanna Matthews

Mikael Salazar: Wilbur “Charlie” Shaw

Nike Doukas: Julie Coleridge

Norman Snow: Col. Brighton Matthews

Nicholas Hormann: Propser Blondlot

Peggy Blow: Karla Banning

Cory Lange: Jeremy

Director William Ludel. Playwright John Glore. Sets John Iacovelli. Lights Doc Ballard. Costumes Shigeru Yaji. Sound/musical composition Karl Fredrik Lundeberg. Dramaturg Jerry Patch. Dialect coach Dudley Knight. Production manager Michael Mora. Stage manager Randall K. Lum. Assistant stage manager Anne Kearson.