THEATER REVIEW : Innovative Format Can’t Save Tiresome ‘Crime of Danny Segal’

Plays about overbearing, protective mothers, especially the cliched Jewish mother, are not exactly the stuff of original drama.

First-time playwright Bobby Wittenberg seems to understand this, so he attempts an innovative approach to a comedy about a Jewish mother who refuses to let go of her only son.

In “The Crime of Danny Segal” at the Knightsbridge Theatre in Old Town, the desperate character of the mother sues her son “for ruining his life” when the young man moves out of the house and into an apartment with his girlfriend.

Unfortunately, this quasi-courtroom comedy/fantasy, complete with a Greek chorus of a jury composed of three Jewish matrons commenting on the courtroom testimony, is tired material in a new format. It has perhaps enough good stuff for a sketch, but stretched over two acts the result is more grueling than captivating.

There is one silver lining: The production is nominally salvaged by the performance of John Ricci, a New York actor with a light comedic touch who is making his West Coast theater debut. He plays the alternately shamed and guilt-ridden son whose anxieties and rebellion are dramatized in a series of flashbacks.

Veteran actress Rose Maling, playing hurt, manipulative and whiny Mama to the hilt, not only wears out her son but the audience as well.

She has only one screechy note to play and it becomes awfully tiresome. If director Linda L. Rand, who helmed the Knightsbridge’s earlier “Black Coffee,” had given the mother an ounce of charm or humor--something to humanize her--the production might even have succeeded.

As it is, the thin comedy is in the hands of the three-woman jury (Roberts West, Joan-Carol Bensen and Deanne Mencher), who cannot sustain the joke.

Others on stage are bland characters with little to add to the mix--a grim-faced judge (Eddie Pratt), the disaffected son’s sweet, ineffective father (George Klein), who designs toys, and the young hero’s girlfriend (Laura Benningfield, whose character and straight lines are as conventional as they come, but who does a terrific job of looking like an East Coast preppy).

A scrappy reporter (Melanie Ewbank) appears on stage for a couple of minutes and manages to exhibit almost every cliche of the oft-maligned media as represented in theater and movies.

The three interiors by set designer George Klein intelligently exploit the cramped stage, whose oppressive low ceiling is the biggest structural hurdle facing the Knightsbridge Theatre. Lighting design by Jim San Filippo and costume design by Sallie Licata are first rate.

* “The Crime of Danny Segal,” Knightsbridge Theatre, 35 S. Raymond Ave. (Braley Building), Pasadena, Friday, 7 p.m.; Sunday matinee, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 25. $15-$10. (818) 440-0821. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.