THEATER REVIEW : With No Sense of Family, ‘Fifth of July’ Fizzles

Lanford Wilson set “Fifth of July,” the first play in his Talley Trilogy, largely on the day after a national holiday.

Outside of his usual cleverness at titling, the name has an important textual purpose. The play takes place in 1977, but in terms of emotional time, it’s still one day after the psychic holiday of the ‘60s and early ‘70s, the supposed dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the beginning of a New Age of peace and love. The members of the Talley family also suffer a disillusionment shared with the nation and a Vietnam hangover.

But the Talleys are still a family.

That sense of family, so integral in Wilson’s work, whether it be a small, related circle or the family of man, is missing in Lee Clark’s production at American Classical Repertory. His actors are as separate as the sprouts in the formal English garden that has been planted by Jed Jenkins, lover of scion Ken Talley Jr.

There is a feeling in Wilson’s play reminiscent of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes,” the aching, wrenching pain of a family torn by fear, greed and emotional apathy. Clark catches none of this; nor do he and his actors find much of the rich humor in the play.

As Ken, a Vietnam veteran who lost both legs in battle and is terrified of resuming teaching, Kevin O’Loane gives a thoroughly founded and affecting performance. It is easy to believe this Ken was a war protester who got sucked into the draft and is still wondering why. Jeffrey P. Johnson’s Jed is often a bit wooden but sometimes effective in his tunnel vision concerning their relationship.

Susan Levinstein, as Ken’s sister, and Cynthia Givens, as their long-time-ago anti-war confederate Gwen, a copper heiress bent on a second career as a recording artist, have the energy these two should embody. Levinstein displays a late-blooming maturity, Givens a buoyant flashiness.

Of the Talley women, Dania Lyn Brenneise’s stylish evocation of Ken’s 13-year-old niece, Shirley, stands powerfully in the forefront for her sense of pubescent poetry and her understanding of the potency of dreams, something she learned from her Aunt Sally and Uncle Matt, who raised her.

The rest of the cast doesn’t tally. Joann Urban Clark’s Aunt Sally is a hayseed farmer’s wife, reading her lines as if for the first time, showing emotion by staring at the stage floor. This isn’t the Sally Talley who married big-city accountant Matt Friedman and shared his intellectual quickness and subtle humor and who guided Shirley in her flights of imagination.

*

Kevin Schultz could have been effective as the copper heiress’s avaricious husband, John, but his one-note Method performance, presumably felt deeply by the actor, doesn’t travel past the lights. Christian Conrad, as the musician trailing John and Gwen, is a cartoon aging hippie, with no base in reality outside of the loud arias he makes of his speeches.

Clark has accomplished one feat on the theater’s postage-stamp-size stage. He moves his eight actors believably and in visually attractive patterns. He has yet to fathom the patterns of Wilson’s text.

* “Fifth of July,” American Classic Repertory, 23891 Via Fabricante, Suite 611-612, Mission Viejo. Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m. Ends July 8. $10. (714) 542-1306. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

Kevin O’Loane: Ken Talley Jr.

Jeffrey P. Johnson: Jed Jenkins

Kevin Schultz: John Landis

Cynthia Givens: Gwen Landis

Susan Levinstein: June Talley

Dania Lyn Brenneise: Shirley Talley

Joann Urban Clark: Sally Talley Friedman

Christian Conrad: Weston Hurley

An American Classic Repertory production of Lanford Wilson’s drama, produced by Paulette Cabral. Directed by Lee Clark. Stage manager: Dawn Elliott.