THEATER REVIEW : Stale Text Hurts Static ‘Shadows’

A year ago, director Michael Arabian made an old play seem new with his dynamic interpretation of “Romeo and Juliet” at CBS Studio Center.

Now Arabian has returned to the same studio to stage “A History of Shadows,” about four gay men’s experiences inside the closet. This time, a new play seems old.

Unlike last year’s production, “Shadows” stays inside a soundstage; there aren’t any outdoor scenes. And even the soundstage isn’t used nearly as inventively as Arabian used it last year. His sense of showmanship is missing.

Ronald Lachman’s script--all fiction--is framed around oral historian Steve (Larry Cox), a gay man in his 20s. From the perspective of 1985, he tells us about his just-published collection of reminiscences by a group of gay men who have known each other more than half a century.

Then he takes us back into his interviews with the randy actor Wesley (Robert Mandan), the wry movie composer Carl (Bernie Kopell), the cautious accountant Robert (William Christopher) and the flamboyant interior designer Billy (Jack Beckerman).

The four interviews are fragmented into an ongoing narrative, with Steve darting back and forth from one man to another, as they hold court in their living rooms. Although the quartet occasionally gets together for flashbacks, generally this nearly three-hour production is too static.

It’s made worse by the lack of intimacy in a cavernous soundstage. The only advantage offered by the venue is that it provides room for a giant screen behind the actors. Mark Friedman’s projected period imagery accompanies the text. But it’s not particularly imaginative, and sometimes it distracts more than it adds. The production might seem more focused in a smaller hall, with fewer projections on a smaller screen.

Most regular theaters also would offer better sight lines. Here the seating consists of folding chairs, most of them on one level (and some of them without padding), so that those who aren’t in the front row or the elevated back row may have to crane their necks.

The material sometimes engages, but sometimes just meanders. At times it resembles a long pitch for a miniseries more than a play.

In the emotional highlight, at the end of the first act, Carl remembers the pain of being unable to see his boyfriend off to war--and recalls what happens when the boyfriend doesn’t come back. It’s an anecdote that movingly illustrates the cost of staying in the shadows.

Yet Lachman is careful not to paint the men as mere victims. They’re generally satisfied with their lives. They regard each other as family, and they rally around each other at key moments. Near the end, the script obliquely raises the provocative question of whether the shadowy past wasn’t even preferable to the AIDS-plagued present.

Unfortunately, the play’s momentum suffers from the men’s overall sense of contentment. And the script strays too often from the theme that’s announced in the title.

Lachman adapted a novel by Robert C. Reinhart, but he used a very docudramatic, nonfictional style. So why didn’t he dig up actual case histories instead of made-up ones? In this format, the “true story” label might add an extra dollop of impact.

The actors, three of them familiar from popular TV series, often enliven the text, though most of them don’t look as old as their characters would have been in 1985. If it’s a little hard to believe they were all such great friends, especially Christopher’s odd man out, that’s a problem with the script as much as with the cast.

* “A History of Shadows,” CBS Studio Center, 4024 Radford Ave., Studio City. Tuesdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends June 19. $20-$25. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 55 minutes.