Almost Hallowed

As the legend of the jack-o’-lantern has it the unfortunate Jack unable to get into either heaven or hell eternally wanders betwixt and between the two his directionless path lit only by a burning coal of hellfire.

Jack has a lot in common with the characters in “All Saints’ Day,” Hank Bunker’s acridly funny new play at N.O.T.E. Bunker brings mythic elements of Catholicism and paganism to his examination of a hilariously dysfunctional Midwestern family, drifting in a suburban limbo of its own making.

One of the damned wanderers in Bunker’s tongue-in-cheek drama is Dot (Pamela Gordon), matriarch of the messy, muddled, staunchly Catholic Anderson clan. Haunted by the spirit of her dead infant son, Dot usually can be found cowering in the closet--that is, when she’s not setting fire to the house or insulting her martyred maid Inez (Jerri White).

Dot’s hubby Harry (James Massey), a frustrated pilot, attempts suicide so often that it has become a sort of after-hours hobby. The couple’s brilliant 9-year-old son John (Terin Jackson) asks theological questions that would baffle the most erudite Jesuit scholar.

Peggy (Danielle Bourgon), Dot and Harry’s daughter, is a nun-like seeker whose moral compass has not yet been shifted by the magnetic misery with which she is surrounded. Patty (Denise Poirier), Peggy’s fraternal twin sister, is her polar opposite--a weary and cynical compromiser intent upon escaping her family by marrying the boozy, wealthy Harrison (Carl J. Johnson)--even though she is pregnant by her ex-boyfriend Joe (Mathew Blair).

Patty and Harrison plan to wed on Halloween--a fitting time for this haunted tribe’s ritualistic observances. Tragedy befalls when Peggy’s boyfriend (Brad Kalas), a befuddled soul wandering midway between adolescence and manhood, attempts to apply Peggy’s absolute standard of goodness to her all-too-fallible family.

Absolute morality is rare in Bunker’s cosmology. Mostly, evil arises from ingrained compromise--the blurring of logic through “leaps of faith.” Bunker vividly illustrates the outlandish dichotomies that result from his characters’ irreconcilable spiritual gyrations. However, some avenues would be better left unexplored: Inez, the sole African American character, is viciously demeaned to no apparent point, and the underdeveloped character of John seems designed primarily as a mouthpiece for Bunker’s irreligious musings.

Pitching the proceedings ever-so-slightly out of reality, director Susan Fenichell elicits heightened-yet-deadpan performances from her capable cast. Although the action is set in the present, Fenichell opts for a fun, ‘50s-retro look that is stylishly realized by Audrey Fisher’s costumes and Poirier’s sets. In counterpoint to the comically doomed Anderson family, this “Leave It to Beaver” blandness lends the play a surreal intensity. Now, if only Bunker would clean up some of his messier tangents, “All Saints’ Day” could be a truly hallowed occasion.

BE THERE

“All Saints’ Day,” N.O.T.E., 1517 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Indefinitely. $10-$12. (213) 856-8611. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.