‘Footsteps’ Navigates Some Tricky Turns

See enough works by a dramatist and you start to feel like you know him. Ted Tally, though, has carved out a chameleon-like career. Tally has gone from the ice adventure epic “Terra Nova” to a dumb comedy like “Hooters” to the Oscar-winning screenplay for “Silence of the Lambs.” He defies familiarity.

It’s an interesting issue in light of his black-ish comedy, “Little Footsteps,” at Two Roads Theatre. On the surface, the play is about two parents coming to terms with a new baby in their lives, but it’s really about two people trying to know each another.

In “Little Footsteps,” with its caustic comedy and extreme caricatures in two very different acts, Tally seems to be writing in shades of Christopher Durang. Durang likes to set up the audience in the first act, and then pull a fast one in the second.

In the first half, hard-working, cynical and self-centered Ben (Blair Bess) and his nice but frazzled pregnant wife, Joanie (Courtney Gebhart-Chandler), try to paint the nursery while confiding in us about their marital problems. He likes to get her mad, and doesn’t know why. She wonders why he can’t be a little happier about the baby. His dead baby jokes have started to scare her. What begins as a light yuppie comedy ends up as emotional warfare.

It’s a shift that works extremely well under Ted Lange’s direction. But then there’s the second half. Tally now flashes forward to the baby’s christening. Ben and Joanie are separated, and grandma Charlotte (Barbara Stuart) is helping with the chores. Guests are partying in the next room, and Ben, though he’s a secular Jew, is determined to give Daniel a bris to match his christening.

Tally is on trickier ground here, juggling sitcom farce with heart-to-heart discussions: Ben with Joanie, Joanie with her dad (Robert Pine), Ben with the baby. The quicksilver changes in tone probably seem impossible on the page, but Gebhart-Chandler and Stuart lead the cast with their uncanny ability to move from the farcical to the sincere.

Stuart’s and Pine’s WASP blue-bloods are wonderful comedy on their own, even though their characters threaten to yank the play out of joint.

As Ben, Bess does a fine job of yanking things back and showing that his character is changing for the better--at least that’s what he’s telling Joanie. In the show’s last astonishing moment--pulled off here like magic--Ben may become a real father, and maybe not.

In fact, the whole play’s schizoid quality is a reflection of Ben. Even Marco DeLeon’s playful set changes radically between the first and second acts. If Tally isn’t a real farceur, he also isn’t as cruel as Durang. So even if the people in “Little Footsteps” are caricatures, they’re usually funny, human ones.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “Little Footsteps.”

* WHERE: Two Roads Theatre, 4348 Tujunga Ave., Studio City.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Nov. 24.

* HOW MUCH: $12.

* CALL: (213) 660-8587.