Stirring the Embers

Allied pilots Archie Bennett (Robert Symonds) and Zelly Shimma (Malachi Throne) both fought courageously during World War II. A U.S. lieutenant, Zelly was shot down in a dogfight over the town of Beverley, England, losing his leg but gaining the status of war hero, while the unscathed Archie, a native Brit, returned to working-class obscurity.

Now, Archie and Zelly are again fighting over Beverley--only this Beverley is no picturesque British village, but rather Zelly’s wife (Priscilla Pointer), who eloped to the States with Zelly some 50 years ago. Jilted by Beverley during the war, the newly wealthy Archie has come to America to claim his rightful “prize.”

Set in modern-day Gloucester, Mass., Israel Horovitz’s geriatric love triangle “Fighting Over Beverley,” at the Fountain Theatre, functions beautifully on two levels--as a frequently uproarious comedy and as a remarkably sensitive portrayal of the unacknowledged inequities of marriage. Despite a few clumsy metaphors and some shortcuts in character development, Horovitz’s entertaining and thought-provoking piece soars under the meticulous direction of Hope Alexander-Willis.

Thanks to the seasoned performances of an inspired cast, the laughs start early and keep coming. The unflappable Pointer sails above the general mayhem with a ladylike aplomb that makes her subsequent emotional epiphany all the more moving. Symonds hilariously balances the extremes of his quintessentially British character, whose priggishly prejudicial worldview is tempered by a wry and undemonstrative pragmatism.

In witty contrast, Beverley and Zelly’s daughter Cecily (the funny, moving Jacqueline Schultz), a high-powered Hollywood literary agent who has flown home after her latest marital catastrophe, is a self-analytical basket case still trying to sort through the traumas of childhood. The scapegoat for Cecily’s unhappiness? Her philandering, emotionally withdrawn dad, epitomized by Throne as a glowering Yankee fisherman whose unquestioned sense of masculine entitlement is about to undergo a sea change.

Under the play’s amusing badinage lies a subtle, serious examination of the war between the sexes, from both the pre- and post-feminist perspectives of Cecily, whose successful career cannot alleviate her thoroughly modern misery, and Beverley, whose long-suppressed indignation comes to a boil with the heat of Archie’s undiminished ardor. Beverley is prompted to reassess her unexamined life--and marriage--with the realization that Zelly and Archie’s competition is more about power than romance, and that she is, atavistically speaking, the bone of contention in this “dogfight.”

The snow fluttering against the windows of Tim Farmer and Mark Henderson’s cozy New England cottage perfectly captures the gentler rhythms of old age. However, Horovitz’s quietly provocative play, a sort of “A Doll’s House” for the ‘90s, warns that, even in a long-term marriage, the long-banked embers of repressed resentment can erupt in a consuming flame.

BE THERE

“Fighting Over Beverley,” Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Sunday matinees March 2 and 16, 3 p.m. Ends March 29. $18-$22. (213) 663-1525. Running time: 2 hours.