Memories Get Muddled in Touching ‘Fathers and Sons’

Alan Brody’s “Invention for Fathers and Sons” at Theatre 40 is a highly sentimentalized, emotionally affecting memory play that shifts back and forth in time with little regard for structural verities.

While stopped at a red light, Joel (Mark Ciglar), an eye surgeon whose emotional coldness has triggered a midlife crisis, somehow travels back in time to his boyhood home. Upon entering this alternate reality, where the dead mingle freely with the living, Joel finally gets a chance to talk “as a man” to his dad Max (Gobby Cohen), who died at 44, Joel’s present age.

Brody never adequately explains the magical mechanics behind Joel’s sudden leap into limbo, a primary reason why his chronologically shifting perspective on four generations of family relationships seems occasionally arbitrary. Although his staging is generally taut, director Robert Neches fails to develop the vital supernatural tension that could have smoothed the drama’s fundamental illogic, especially during the beginning scenes. As it stands now, Joel and Max greet one another more with backslapping heartiness than mystified awe.

However, Brody creates undeniably involving characters, while Neches elicits deeply sympathetic performances from his talented cast. Cohen is especially devastating as the gentle, self-sacrificing Max, a failed dreamer whose imperfect gestures of love condemn him to painful emotional isolation.

* “Invention for Fathers and Sons,” Theatre 40, 241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Mondays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 18. $12. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.