Early Sketches of Van Gogh’s Troubled Genius

Stephen Fife’s drama “Break of Day,” about the early career of Vincent Van Gogh, is an earnest, initially phlegmatic offering that finally achieves a searing intensity in Billy Hayes’ well-considered staging at the Lillian Theatre.

The play begins with Van Gogh’s failed stint as an evangelist in a poor Belgian mining village. Dana Kilgore’s lighting and Scott Siedman’s set--with its backdrop of “picture frames” featuring slides of Van Gogh’s work--mirror the muted rusticism of such early Van Gogh pieces as “The Potato Eaters.”

After his disgrace in Belgium, Van Gogh (Brendan Ford), aflame with artistic vision, returns to his family home in Holland to paint. There, despite the disapproval of his hidebound pastor papa Theodorus (Victor Raider-Wexler), Van Gogh’s genius takes fire.

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But not the play--not yet, at least. Depicting the processes of genius can be a rough go. Once Fife establishes Van Gogh’s artistic brilliance--a given--he falls back on the episodic and somewhat meager elements of Van Gogh’s domestic drama--his arguments with his father; his irritation with his doting mother, Anna (Kathleen Bunny Gibson); his financial dependence on his brother Theo (Brian Gaskill); and his hopeless crush on his widowed cousin Kay (Leslie Hunt).

Despite the best efforts of the well-cast Ford--who even physically resembles Van Gogh--the unrelenting fervor wears a bit thin. Yet at his best, under Hayes’ austere direction, Ford captures Van Gogh’s incendiary zeal--that intensity of vision that forced him into bouts of period madness. And Raider-Wexler is superb as a well-meaning father whose pettiness blinds him to the capacities of his brilliant, doomed son.

BE THERE

“Break of Day,” Lillian Theatre, 1076 N. Lillian Way, Hollywood. Wednesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 3. $15-$18. (323) 655-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.