Well-Paced Tale of the Dead and ‘The Living’

Nearly 70,000 Londoners died during the terrible plague of 1665. Yet Anthony Clarvoe’s “The Living,” a dramatization of that harrowing crucible, is not a series of deathbed scenes. Now at the Colony Studio Theatre in Silver Lake, the play focuses on the pockets of human activity and feeling that glimmered throughout the deadly summer among those who stayed in London after most of the town’s upper classes had fled.

When this grim but vigorous script first surfaced, in a workshop that was part of the Mark Taper Forum’s 1991 New Work Festival, it may have been difficult to discuss it outside the context of AIDS. In David Rose’s engrossing staging for the Colony, however, it’s apparent that “The Living” transcends any particular calamity.

During most of the play, the people of London don’t touch each other physically and steer clear of each other’s breath, taking great pains to avoid the contagion. Those few doctors who haven’t left town wear bizarre masks that make them look, as one character notes, like vultures. Papers pass from one person to the next with giant tongs.

But Clarvoe’s more heroic characters try to maintain a social bond. The Lord Mayor (John Ross Clark) struggles to keep the city functioning, despite a lack of support from the king. A nonconformist preacher (fiery Silas Cooper) attempts to provide spiritual solace in churches that have been abandoned by their regular ministers. Although no one knows what causes the disease, statistician John Graunt (eloquent Kelly Foran) examines the lists of the dead and other data, looking for clues to the future course of the plague. Dr. Harman (David Carey Foster) tends the sick, though he questions whether he actually accomplishes anything.

Individuals who aren’t quite so publicly noble also appear. At first Sarah (an especially magnetic Alison Shanks) is concerned only with her own family. But her roadside encounter with a group of country folk who are guarding their town from the possibly infected Londoners--a brilliant scene near the end of the first act--begins to make her more conscious of the social dimensions of the crisis. By the end, she has become a nurse.

Mrs. Finch (Lisa Beezley) is employed to make official reports on the causes of death, and she’s not above overlooking obvious signs of plague in exchange for a little bribe from survivors who fear being quarantined. The king’s emissary (D. Ewing Woodruff) veers between trying to help the Lord Mayor and saving his own skin.

The first act paints the devastating picture slowly but surely. The second act picks up the pace and culminates in a mesmerizing blend of text and image. Although the wooden stage, almost bare, is a bit too sterile, Ruth Judkowitz’s sound design helps create a foreboding atmosphere.

BE THERE

“The Living,” Colony Studio Theatre, 1944 Riverside Drive, Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends April 4. $23-$26. (213) 665-3011. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.