Historical Research Enriches ‘La Chasse’

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about “La Chasse (The Hunt)”--Christopher Cartmill’s well-written play about the life and loves of French painter Eugene Delacroix--is how successfully it employs historical figures as portals into the sensibilities of another time and place, rather than as the facile, rearward-looking projections of contemporary issues that plague so many fictionalized biographies.

Insight, painstaking research and professional stagecraft are all very much in evidence under Cartmill’s direction at North Hollywood’s Bitter Truth Theatre. Instead of exploiting the amorous escapades of Delacroix (Barton Smith), Cartmill uses the character as a focal point for meditation on the European schism between propriety and feeling. That rift reached an unprecedented level of intensity with the rise of the early 19th century Romantic movement.

Through his flamboyant painting style, Delacroix became a principal exponent of the primacy of passion, yet this delicately nuanced portrait reveals the artist as very much the emotional pupil of the two strong-willed women who divide his heart: a sensitive dancer (Delia Ford) who models for him, and a baroness (Kerry Hite) he knew from childhood who becomes the object of his obsession. Cartmill appears as Delacroix’s friend, a delightfully obnoxious fop, also in mad pursuit of the Baroness.

Ironically, when it comes to making the carefully crafted, often eloquent dialogue flow with the ease of natural speech, Cartmill and Ford consistently outshine the leads, a slightly distracting imbalance in an otherwise handsomely executed staging.

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* “La Chasse,” Bitter Truth Theatre, 11050 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 21. $15. (818) 755-7900. Running time: 2 hours.