Yes, Indeed, for ‘Young Man’

Gertrude Stein lived in occupied France during World War II and wrote a play inspired by the experience, titled “Yes Is for a Very Young Man.”

After more than half a century, “Yes” is being revived for the Interact Theatre by Lamont Johnson, who helped bring it to the Pasadena Playhouse in 1946, when he was a young man.

Heartfelt, completely accessible and redolent of its specific time and place, “Yes” is a shock for those who think of Stein’s plays as clever, oblique exercises set in never-never land (for example, “Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights,” produced in L.A. in 1986).

The characters in “Yes” are surprisingly real, flesh-and-blood people. They change and grow. Stein kept her patented repetitive wordplay to a minimum.

In five scenes covering the period from 1940 until the liberation in 1944, Stein depicts a young, small-town couple whose political attitudes diverge sharply. Denise (Megan Zakar), from a landed family, thinks husband Henri (Josh Adell) is a lazy layabout for not joining Petain’s collaborationist army.

In fact, Henri and his brother Ferdinand (David Drew Gallagher) aren’t exactly dynamos. The occupation put them into a funk. At least Henri appears to take a bit of carnal pleasure from his marriage; Ferdinand, meanwhile, tries unsuccessfully to make love to the older American woman Constance (Stacy Ray) who lives on an estate next door. The “Yes” of the title is what he hopes she’ll say, but she sticks with “No.”

Ferdinand is sent to Germany as an industrial worker. But back home, Henri and Constance gradually begin saying yes to the Resistance. When Ferdinand returns home on a visit, he too has been roused from his inertia.

Stein wasn’t making an espionage movie; exact details of the characters’ recruitment into the Resistance, and what they do there, remain somewhat mysterious. By conventional dramaturgical standards, the continued marriage of Denise and Henri is rather baffling too. This was not a situation, however, in which people felt free to express themselves publicly.

Johnson’s staging, assisted by Paul Cuneo’s music and sound design and Vicki Sanchez’s costumes, masterfully convey the repressed atmosphere--and the burst of exhilarating candor--that accompanied the liberation.

Adell’s Henri is an especially entertaining fellow, even when he’s in a funk. Ray is luminous as the American (who is considerably younger than Stein was during the war). Small parts such as the American’s aged servants (Mary Carver and Eve Brenner), a superficially friendly German soldier (James Harper) and a middle-aged Resistance activist (James Gleason) are fully inhabited--just as this slender play itself feels tightly packed with conflicting emotions.

BE THERE

“Yes Is for a Very Young Man,” Interact Theatre, 11855 Hart St., North Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Indefinitely. $20. (818) 566-8499. Running time: 2 hours.