Tortured Kind of Intimacy

Death can really make some people rude. When Harry Baker (Michael O’Hagan), an aging teacher at a New England community college, shoots himself in front of his girlfriend, the woman is forced to confront not only her loss but a sudden houseful of Harry’s relatives. Some of them are naturally unpleasant and all of them under a great deal of stress. Not everyone behaves well.

This is the plot of Richard Nelson’s “New England,” now at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. Nelson is a wonderful and a smart writer if a somewhat withholding dramatist. In plays like “Some Americans Abroad” and “Two Shakespearean Actors,” he examines the behavior of groups of people who are forced into a kind of intimacy, often on a foreign shore. He likes the idea of cultural displacement, and in this play the characters are all (but one) Brits who for one reason or another live in the U.S. with varying degrees of ambivalence.

Nelson’s comedy often comes from people misunderstanding the boundaries and obligations of their relationships, leaving them unable to correctly interpret all of the signals they are receiving. Case in point: Harry’s girlfriend Alice (Katherine McGrath) has invited Tom (Phil Proctor), brother to her ex-husband, up to Connecticut for the weekend. Are they still related? Do they owe each other anything--for example, common courtesy under dire circumstances?

Poor Tom has accepted Alice’s invitation for a country weekend because he needs a spot of relaxing. What he gets is anything but. Within seconds of being introduced to his host, his host is dead. Soon his room is taken away, no one asks him if he wants anything to eat, and he becomes the unwilling whipping boy and confessor to a houseful of very edgy people.

Those people are Harry’s family. His daughter Elizabeth (Melinda Peterson) is cold, acquisitive and generally unpleasant. Her brother Paul (Benjamin Livingston) is a Hollywood script reader who must fight for his family’s respect both because of his job and his choice of a wife, a French-born passive-aggressive coquette named Sophie (Lillian Garrett-Groag). Harry’s eldest child is Gemma (Deirdre O’Connell), a painter who lives in New Mexico. A little ditsy and nicer than her sister, Gemma believes she may have been a contributing factor to her father’s suicide because just before he died she told him she was engaged to her Mexican gardener.

Also on hand is Harry’s twin brother, Alfred (O’Hagan), a jovial professor who moves in on Alice even before Harry’s ashes have been returned from the funeral parlor.

As the evening wears on to deep night (beautifully denoted by Jane Reisman’s lighting), Paul and Tom, a dialect coach to bad actors, bond over stupid things Americans have said to them. At the same time, Paul articulates his budding theory about why his countrymen are so condescending about America--because they are afraid of it, he says. When he applies his fear theory as the reason for his father’s suicide, the angry Elizabeth disagrees. As she sees it, her father was angry.

The actual cause of Harry’s suicide is not really the point here. His death is clearly Nelson’s excuse for throwing these people together in difficult circumstance and watching them switch allegiances and truths. And as it becomes clear that Harry has told Alice very little of the truth about his life and in fact has treated her scandalously, Harry’s children begin to wonder what they owe this woman, who she is to them, and why they should be nice to her.

The resulting awkwardness has a lovely comic sheen, orchestrated with an Alan Ayckbourn-like precision.

The real linchpin of the drama is the outsider--Tom--caught there because he’s too polite to go home. In Proctor’s winning portrayal, Tom’s decency only keeps him in the path of flying hostility. One such interception, an unexpected hit from his ex-sister-in-law Alice, sends him and the audience reeling.

With its punning title, “New England” is a finely etched character study, with small surprises and revelations that build to a seemingly anticlimactic ending. The ensemble, under artistic director David Emmes, is very tight, creating the turning moods and alliances that make up the meat of the play.

The final image finds Tom alone as the family goes out with a unified public face to confront its guests. Tom stares dolefully at the box of ashes--as if he now understands that this is the only human relationship from which he can expect no terrible surprise. Don’t underestimate Nelson’s lack of overt drama: For the careful viewer, this undramatic ending carries a wallop.

* “New England,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7:30 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 2:30 p.m. Ends May 12. $28-$38. (714) 957-4033. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

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SH

Michael O’Hagan: Harry Baker/Alfred Baker

Katherine McGrath: Alice Berry

Phil Proctor: Tom Berry

Melinda Peterson: lizabeth Baker

Benjamin Livingston: Paul Baker

Deirdre O’Connell: Gemma Baker

Lillian Garrett-Groag: Sophie Baker

A South Coast Repertory production. By Richard Nelson. Directed by David Emmes. Sets Neil Peter Jampolis. Costumes Ann Bruice Aling. Lights Jane Reisman. Sound Garth Hemphill. Voice/dialect coach Dudley Knight. Production manager Michael Mora.