Durang: Lights of Fancy in Costa Mesa

In a very real sense, Christopher Durang is not a playwright. Even his longer pieces look more like extended comic sketches. His shorter plays, such as the three on exhibit at the Theatre District under the umbrella title “Durang Bang,” could fly on television’s “Saturday Night Live.”

Durang has an infectious, ripe, absurdist sense of humor, but his ability to translate it onto the stage isn’t always as precise and craftsman-like as one might wish. As in all his works, bona fide laughs create a smile, but that smile may be gone by the time you exit.

The success of his writing also depends on the comic abilities of the actors and the comic style of the director. In this case, director John Bowerman states in a program note that his discovery of Durang’s “An Actor’s Nightmare” during college was an epiphany.

That must have been an awfully good production. Bowerman’s treatment of the play here is sluggish, lumbering and slow, with meaningful pauses fine in Pinter but disastrous in Durang, or any comedy.

The performances are also plodding. The actor’s nightmare, involving everything that an actor might be terrorized by on stage, from losing his pants to forgetting his lines, in this staging is disjointed and doesn’t get near the laughs it should, particularly considering that it closes the show.

The second piece, “ ‘dentity Crisis,” has much more life, the timing is more valid for the genre, and the performances are closer to the mark. Jane (Voiza Arnold) is a young girl who can’t figure out all the people in her life. Robert (Jason Hillhouse) is her kid brother, her father and her grandfather and the French count with whom her mother (Deborah Conroy) is having an affair.

Jane’s therapist (Christopher Sullivan) has a quickie sex change one afternoon, as does his wife (Lorianne Hill), which confuses Jane even more. The laughs derive from Jane’s confusion, if one thinks this sort of thing is funny, and it sometimes is in the sometimes split-second performance of Hillhouse in his four roles.

The standout of the evening is the opener, “Wanda’s Visit,” about a happily married couple whose placid life is turned upside-down by the unexpected visit from the husband’s high school sweetheart, whose pattern since graduation has been one disaster after another. Hillhouse and Hill shine as the marrieds, as does Conroy as the ludicrously tragic Wanda, and Bowerman’s direction hits all the right buttons, from timing to interior rhythms to subtle comic shadings.

The evening is a good lesson in Durang. “Wanda” shows how to do it for better or for worse, and “Nightmare” shows how not to do it. Bowerman might consider switching the pieces so “Wanda” will have the audience exiting with a smile.

BE THERE

“Durang Bang,” Theatre District, 2930 Bristol St., Suite C-106, Costa Mesa. Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Ends Nov. 29. (714) 435-4043. $15-$20. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.