Theater Review : ‘God’ No Force to Be Reckoned With

Clearly playwright Don L. Freeman doesn’t want to hide his intentions in “God and Other Terrorists,” at the Laguna Festival of the Arts Forum Theatre through Dec. 17. When you name your central character Emmet Surrey Force, you are putting something more than a character on stage: You’re creating a presence as much as a person.

Which is all to the good: The best characters are presences who resonate. But neither Freeman, actor Julius Noflin as Force nor director Sunil Swaroop does what he must in the first full production by the Theatre Group.

We are set up to encounter one of the world’s literary superstars and superegos--a James Baldwin, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote wrapped into one awesome package. Adding a curveball to cultural presumptions: He is black. Adding tension: He is entering an AIDS hospice to finish his play before he dies.

Force is a man who should be raging, raging, against the dying of the light. In Noflin’s hands, Force simply is not a force, but a mildly peeved fellow with a foul tongue.

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Unfortunately for Freeman, Force also is not a unique dramatic creation. “The Destiny of Me,” Larry Kramer’s fine follow-up to “The Normal Heart,” looks at Ned Weeks, a volcanically raging HIV-positive writer in the hospital. Like Force, Weeks is a star, knows it and considers his fate to be proof that something is distinctly out of whack with the universe.

Rage, though, can become pure whining on stage; it’s the difference between treacly melodrama and tragedy. Freeman walks the tightrope when he brings Force’s long-forgotten son into the action.

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Yes, this godfather of the international gay literati actually had a son, Simon (Thomas Lynam). Force abandoned his family years ago. Simon has dropped by, having heard the news and just wanting to say hi. But Force, assuming that everyone is as two-faced as himself, senses other motives. He presses Simon into admitting that what he really wants is for the father to apologize for desertion.

It’s a primal, though not earth-shaking, conflict (nothing, for example, like the kind of psychic temblors Kramer crafts in “The Destiny of Me”). But Freeman handles the drama clumsily: He starts cranking it up in Act I, halts it as Force collapses with illness, then resumes it hesitantly in Act II.

When things come to a head, there isn’t the catharsis of a great conflict, partly because Freeman doesn’t construct it for maximum effect and partly because Noflin and Lynam can’t remotely suggest a convincing blood tie (Noflin’s blackness versus Lynam’s pale-white Anglo-ness doesn’t help). The only other figure of any weight is Force’s personal assistant, Digby, played with a fine mix of patience and exasperation by Royce Sciortino.

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Hampered by the Forum’s distant, auditorium-like proscenium, Swaroop’s hesitant direction tends to freeze his actors on a straight line: Everyone looks and feels constricted, pent up. This is the kind of material that should let the dramatic juices flow. But for this young company, willing to take on new plays, there’s always next time.

* “God and Other Terrorists,” Laguna Festival of the Arts Forum Theatre, 650 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 17. $10-$15. (714) 647-2460. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Julius Noflin: Emmet Surrey Force

Royce Sciortino: Digby

Thomas Lynam: Simon

Brian McCoy: Carl

Ashok V. Sinha: Lindsey

John David: Leonard

A Theatre Group production of a play by Don L. Freeman, directed by Sunil Swaroop. Music: John Smatla.