VALLEY WEEKEND : THEATER REVIEW : ‘Set in Motion’ Delivers Fresh, Haunting Story : Thom Thomas’ play at Group Repertory Theatre proves to be a strong offering, despite a lapse into cliched psychodrama.

They call it “recovered memory”--the phenomenon in which victims of incest and abuse unearth buried recollections of bad, bad times many years after the fact. In America, it’s a cottage industry in the psychiatric world, the publishing world and the theater world, where psychodrama continues to reign.

The good thing about Thom Thomas’ play “Set in Motion” at Group Repertory Theatre is that it is a psychodrama about recovered memory without announcing itself as such. The recovered memory movement has produced several bad polemical plays. “Set in Motion” isn’t one of them.

Thomas directs his own play here, and from the first moments, there’s a quiet dread floating above the stage that you can’t pin down. It permeates his characters, who are all good yet all flawed. Max (Burke Byrnes) is a concert violinist who has died on tour in China, and exists for us as a kind of ghost recalled by one of his sons, Chris (Larry Eisenberg). Max appears full of himself, while Chris seems to be a hollow man, someone who exists to observe others and write hack sitcoms. His brother, Jack (Stephen R. Hudis), is a nice, emotional guy who also hits his teen-age son, Scotty (Paul Armand).

And so it goes with everyone who has come to the Vermont family home for Max’s memorial service. Annie (Gwen Van Dam), Max’s wife, is sadly used to being in the shadows of the great artist, but also able to carry around terrible secrets. The role of Tess (Gay Storm) appears to be to provide food at any occasion, but as Chris’ ex, she has some frightening ulterior motives.

*

Chris doesn’t run from her, he stays. And listens, and remembers. (As a playwright, Thomas is almost obsessed with flashback technique.) While Jack grabs the urn with Max’s ashes and buries them in the back yard, Chris thinks him back to life. Though it’s rather obvious what Chris’ memories are leading to, Thomas manages to let it unfold with the gradual pace of a life reviewed.

Thomas’ real ace in the hole is his dialogue, which rings with fresh humor instead of collapsing into cliches. The cliches aren’t altogether avoided, though, and when “Set in Motion” does play the psychodrama card, it plays it like a tinhorn gambler. While Thomas denies Chris a final victory, he gives his central character a phony consolation prize that robs the play of some of its integrity. This is a good story with the wrong ending.

Byrnes plays against the effete violinist image with a rough, burly approach that rings true as the drama unfolds. Eisenberg and Hudis are ideal physical casting as Byrnes’ sons; while Hudis plays Jack’s heart on his sleeve without sentimentalizing, Eisenberg gives time and shading to Chris’ chastening self-reflections.

Sometimes, Group Repertory productions fall off drastically in the supporting roles. Not this time, with strong and/or funny moments from Van Dam, Storm, Armand and Robert Mont as Tess’ latest husband. John Payton’s elegant, spare set somehow blends funereal blackness with a vision of skies and landscapes, and Art Busch’s lights add one more dimension.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “Set in Motion.”

* WHERE: Group Repertory Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood.

* WHEN: Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Runs indefinitely.

* HOW MUCH: $15.

* FYI: (818) 769-7529.