‘Coal’ Mines Drama Hollywood-Style

Life is hard and grim in the 19th century coal-mine country of West Virginia, where Mitchel Faris’ play “Coal” is set. All the miners can count on, besides the occupational hazard of dying young, are perpetual poverty and the bondage of company credit. After a harsh, mysterious, new superintendent shows up to whip the mines into profitable shape (they are dying too), things really go downhill.

“Coal,” which is getting its first production at Stages, has big Hollywood emotions: love, jealousy, betrayal, the yearning for a better life. It’s also full of literary melodrama. An invisible “beast with eyes of burning coals”--not a Yeti, but rather the playwright’s recurring metaphor for death--stalks the stage like an overworked ham in a Cecil B. DeMille horse opera.

In fact, “Coal” has all the earmarks of a screenplay, although it’s mounted in a theater. The plot moves along in swift cinematic scenes that lay out the actionwith crafty, if routine, efficiency.

We are introduced to easily grasped central characters: Matthew, the miner who should have been made superintendent; his wife, Urseline, who wants to leave and start a farm and a family in California; Fashgna, the gentle preacher with the Scottish burr, a God-fearing man of the cloth who knows a dark secret about Jake, the pistol-toting superintendent who has just arrived on the scene; Jake, who makes immediate trouble; the company storekeeper, James, who serves as comic relief; and his assistant, Catherine, who thickens the plot with designs on Matthew.

Stages, which may be the only theater in Orange County with a back lot, achieves a striking pictorial effect when an entire wall of the soot-stained, planked-wood set swings open like a barn door and lets in the silvery light of dusk. It is momentarily dazzling. Also, backlighted by the sky is a huge, wizened, old tree, misshapen by pollution no doubt, which stands like a portent of doom.

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The production is given a fine pictorial sense of composition by Faris, who co-directed with Tracy Perdue and also created the set. It is coupled with an old-timey Appalachian sound design that becomes increasingly lavish (think of the stylish score for a Western such as “The Big Country”) and eventually noir-ish (suggesting “Dial M for Murder”).

The opening of the set is a coup de thea^tre the first time, less so the second. With the fourth or fifth swing of the barn door, it’s just a dramatic interruption, further proof that “Coal” was meant for the screen instead of the stage.

The actors are young and uneven but thoroughly entertaining. Most notable for staying in character are Gavin Carlton as Jake and Matthew Tully as the preacher.

* “Coal,” Stages Theatre, 1188 Fountain Way, Unit E-F, Anaheim. Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Ends Sept. 29. $12-$14. (714) 630-3059. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

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“Coal,”

Mo Arii: Urseline

Patti Cumby: Catherine

Gavin Carlton: Jake

Matthew Tully: Fashgna

Robert Dean Nunez: James

Kreg Donahoe: Matthew

A Stages Theatre production of a play by Mitchel Faris. Directed by Faris and Tracy Perdue. Sets: Faris. Lighting: Kirk Huff. Sound: Paige Giffin. Scenic painter: Tony Faris.