Theater : SCR Fleshes Out Gurney’s ‘Later Life’

Having two major Southern California revivals of A. R. Gurney’s “Later Life” open within a week makes the play some kind of theatrical marvel.

First, it supported a brisk, glossy, Broadway-style reading at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, as though it were a glib Wendy Wasserstein satire with every line played for the most laughs.

Now it is getting a deliberate, probing, detailed reading on the Second Stage at South Coast Repertory, as though a dark Edward Albee comedy has come to roost in search of meaning and nuance.

Either way, “Later Life” turns out to be brief, funny and very entertaining. It is one of Gurney’s latest boat-in-a-bottle mantel pieces, originally presented last year in New York, about repressed upper-crusters whose privileged lives are really a mess.

SCR’s production, which opened Friday, lends this one-act play as much weight as its slender setup can bear. Providing depth are Richard Doyle’s rounded portrayal of Austin, a gracious Brahmin locked into his Puritan breeding, and Melinda Peterson’s sensitive performance as Ruth, a hard-luck divorcee from the Midwest.

Some 30 years after they once met in Capri, when he was a young naval officer on leave and she was a sorority girl just out of college, this middle-aged pair meet again on the well-appointed terrace of a Boston high-rise. A cocktail party is buzzing beyond the French doors. The entire harbor is spread out below them in the dark.

Will they take what seems a second chance for the affair they wanted to have but didn’t the first time around? He’s divorced and lonely. She’s separated from husband No. 4 and willing. Gurney keeps us wondering, while a droll parade of guests invades their privacy and brings a halt to their conversation.

These varied types--all played with bravura skill by Jane A. Johnston and Ron Boussom--are caricatures taken to comic extremes. They send up contemporary American society with pinpoint accuracy: the obsessive computer nerd, the soignee lesbian on the make, the former professor who can’t stop smoking, the couple from Atlanta refueling their lives on Yankee culture, the warring pair of retirees, the Jewish violist who dropped her husband because he was musically weak, and so on.

While the Old Globe production aims for sleekness and bright polish, with the accent on its witty cameos, SCR’s manages to give the play a more heartfelt dimension. It keeps the focus on Austin and Ruth. They are, after all, the main characters whose fates hang in the balance.

We don’t know a lot about them. Gurney offers outlines, well-written and playable but sketchy nonetheless. Director Mark Rucker insists on filling them in. He has Doyle and Peterson flesh out their roles with the texture of authentic behavior. They bring Austin and Ruth to dramatic life by showing us how they feel, not just what they say.

*

Technically, the show is flawless. The costumes and set are rich, lighting subtle and sound design evocative. If we remember plays by their productions, SCR’s “Later Life” will lodge in memory as a Gurney snapshot of the early ‘90s taken by a prime band of miniaturists.

* “Later Life,” South Coast Repertory, Second Stage , 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Ends Oct. 23. $24-$34. (714) 957-4033. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes (no intermission).

Richard Doyle Austin

Melinda Peterson Ruth

Ron Boussom Jim, Roy, Duane, Ted, Walt

Jane A. Johnston Sally, Marion, Nancy, Esther, Judith

A South Coast Repertory production of a play by A. R. Gurney. Directed by Mark Rucker. Scenic designer: Mark Wendland. Costume designer: Dwight Richard Odle. Lighting designer: Lonnie Alcaraz. Sound design: Garth Hemphill. Production manager: Michael Mora. Stage manager: Randall K. Lum.