‘Star Dust’ Tracks Uneasy Relationship

Fanatical obsession and fractured mother-daughter relations come bursting through the emotional floodgates in “Star Dust,” but Elizabeth Gould Hemmerdinger’s new two-character thriller at the Tiffany Theater proves too leaky a vessel to give them much shape.

This uneasy mix of heartfelt psychodrama and over-the-top melodrama benefits from handsome performances by Joan Van Ark as a famous television reporter, and Van Ark’s real-life daughter Vanessa Marshall as a disturbed stranger who shows up unexpectedly at the door claiming to be a prospective buyer for her isolated New England house.

In the ensuing game of cat and mouse, Marshall trades identities and personalities with impressive dexterity, ricocheting from menacing sociopath to fragile victim to ironic commentator--sometimes in mid-sentence. Van Ark artfully plays on her own fame to lend authenticity to her character’s predicament as a celebrity stalking victim, treating her visitor with an engaging blend of indulgence and apprehension.

But in exploring the common link between stalker and prey--their unresolved emotional dependence on the reporter’s mother, a suicide--Hemmerdinger’s script rehashes the same psychological territory over and over. Her even more problematic insistence on maintaining a realistic context strains even the most willing suspension of disbelief--there’s just no way anyone would end up sharing her dead mother’s clothes with a maniac who’d been holding her at gunpoint.

Faced with these structural limitations, director Ron Link tries to compensate by racing through the dialogue at an exaggerated clip. The brisk momentum certainly leaves less time to dwell on the rampant absurdities, but it skirts the fundamental credibility problem--the piece might have fared better as an unapologetic plunge into pure surrealism.

* “Star Dust,” Tiffany Theater, 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends March 16. $27.50. (310) 289-2999. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.