Good Setup, No Payoff in ‘Hard Road Home’

Dan Duling’s new play, “Hard Road Home,” lurks on the edges of Sam Shepard country without ever taking the full leap into poetic and emotional abandon. In the tiny confines of the 15-seat Theatre Shed, danger and the unexpected are always felt in the wings, but they rarely burst out and grab us.

The ultimate lack of nerve in Duling’s play about a turbulent, see-sawing marriage is all the more disappointing because of the clear theatrical intelligence that courses through most of the work and director Gregory Bach’s resourceful staging. It is a lot of work that returns mostly coy, empty rewards.

The Shepard influence--especially “Fool for Love”--is all over Duling’s play, from the decaying California highway motel setting to the wandering, working-class guy returning home to reclaim the woman he left behind. Plus, there is the emphasis on consciously heightened and comic language. Many of “Hard Road Home’s” best moments are when his characters are lost in a reverie of western-style loneliness, or when violence and comedy giddily blend.

It’s just that the more we think about it, the more implausible the situation. Exactly two years from the night he inexplicably left, Jake (Russell Philpott, alternating with Kevin Kindlin) is returning to the Sumner Deluxe Motel outside of Fresno, managed by his wife, Shirley (Paige Rowland, alternating with Charlene Bell). What Jake doesn’t know is that aluminum-siding salesman Cal (Blumen Young, alternating with David Alan Nelson) is closing a sale with Shirley by sleeping with her--on her invitation.

Duling doesn’t need to sell us on Cal; he’s the classic odd-man-in-the-middle, the desperately hapless traveling salesman hungry for any kind of thrill. Duling, though, has a lot more selling to do with Jake and Shirley, who are the play’s soul but whose impulses and demons never quite come into focus.

To be sure, Duling and Bach, along with the actors, try very hard. Each half of the couple has extended interior monologues, which Bach stages as cinematic voice-overs. This is technically audacious but only marginally revelatory. Even with these devices, we still never really know why Jake left in the first place, why Shirley has such an obsession with death, which results in a coldhearted manner, or what really has made Jake return.

While Duling’s ear is keen, smart and funny early on, it becomes tone-deaf as he homes in on the elusive Jake and Shirley. Even Philpott’s and Rowland’s strong, physical approaches to their roles don’t get us closer to them. Philpott looks like a house painter and a man on a mission, and cleverly conceals menace under an understanding-sounding voice. Rowland has to do a silly strip routine (don’t ask), then project a cold, mechanical facade and then burst into nonstop tears for 20 minutes. She endures, but we wonder what it was all for. Young, in the middle, is superb.

So is Bach’s incredibly eye-filling and detailed set. He manages to create Shirley’s ratty living room, the motel entrance, Jake’s car, Cal’s car and a phone booth, all in a space no bigger than most bedrooms.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “Hard Road Home.”

* WHERE: The Theatre Shed, 10806 Ventura Blvd. Suite 9, Studio City.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 28.

* HOW MUCH: $15.

* CALL: (213) 466-1767.