THEATER REVIEW : ‘Close’ Encounters in Stormy Relationship

The ongoing symbiosis between Stages Theatre Center and Argentine playwright-psychologist Eduardo Pavlovsky takes a decidedly whimsical departure from somber political drama with “Close,” the English-language premiere of “Cerca.”

Pavlovsky typically sets his furtive descents into moral compromise and self-deception amid the repressive Argentine totalitarian regime of the 1970s--last season’s Stages production of “Potestad,” for example, chronicled a man’s helplessness and even complicity in the “disappearing” of his child by sinister government agents.

“Close” takes place against more archetypal backdrop--the timeless misunderstanding between men and women--where its explorations into the “inconclusive melody” of an unnamed couple reveal, well, moral compromise and self-deception.

Even without his usual political context, Pavlovsky’s signature themes, as well as his elliptical narrative style are very much in evidence. The couple, ex-Doors drummer John Densmore and Leslie Neale, speak to the audience rather than to each other, and in their alternating monologues they keep cycling back through the roots of their attraction and the unresolved issues that have tortured them through the nine years they’ve been together.

Director Paul Verdier has taken Pavlovsky’s free-associative rush of words, hauntingly evocative and maddeningly ambiguous, as a challenge to depict this relationship in musical as well as verbal terms. Using a variety of percussive instruments scattered around the stage, the performers embellish their stories and reflections with gongs, bells and on occasion a full drum set.

This self-styled “jam session of words and sounds” is particularly effective in a sequence on the primacy of rhythm over content in language, as Neale describes the pauses, breaths and phrasing she savors in her mate’s speech, while Densmore brushes out a slow jazz riff. At times, the piece erupts into pure music, like Densmore’s riotous explosion on drums as Neale contorts in a frenzied dance.

Though he achieves a disarming, almost childlike candor in his narrative, Densmore is a somewhat awkward raconteur--his musical forays ring with greater assurance.

Neale, given more range here than her enigmatic, nearly silent presence in “Potestad” afforded, proves versatile and expressive with the spoken word. “I only wanted him to look at me,” she recalls of their earliest meetings, “I didn’t want him to talk.” Perhaps a wise choice, given his admission that “I often say the ridiculous when I have to face the unavoidable,” but it set the pattern for tenuous communication that’s become the dominant chord of their life together.

Comfort, fear, mystery and jealousy are the recurring motifs invoked but never fleshed out in this relatively slight but entertaining word-jazz composition. The paucity of detail and dramatic through-lines leave much for the audience to fill in from their own experience--they’ll need to bring a fair amount of it to the performance.

* “Close” (“Cerca”), Stages Theatre Center, 1540 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Oct. 28, 9 p.m.; Oct. 29, 7 p.m. Staged reading in Spanish, Oct. 28, 7 p.m., Oct. 29, 4 p.m. $18. (213) 465-1010. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.