Love Story Outshines War’s Pain

Stephen Metcalfe’s “Strange Snow” premiered 17 years ago, but the Vietnam War, which the drama deals with like some bad, nagging dream, feels even more remote.

Director Emilio Borelli’s revival at the Gene Bua Acting for Life Theatre lessens that remoteness somewhat with a different emphasis and a sensitively cast and paced staging, but the play’s old-fashioned dramatics make it feel of another time and place.

It’s a common malady of Vietnam dramas: What used to be the cutting-edge topic for playwrights interested in fusing the personal and the political is beginning to feel as long in the tooth as “The Best Years of Our Lives.” And like that post-World War II effort by Hollywood to heal the nation’s wounds, “Strange Snow” also explores the veteran as walking wounded back in the States. David (Steve Fitchpatrick) drowns himself in booze daily as he’s taken care of by thirtysomething sister Martha (Geraldine Singer), who describes herself as “the almost perfect version of the virginal schoolmarm.”

When he’s not feeling silently sorry for himself, David likes ribbing Martha, so he latches onto the “almost” in her self-description, making her confess that she has had sex with a loser whom David dubs “Ichabod Crane.”

Metcalfe pads his play with such wisecracks and jokes, with fellow Viet vet--and David’s buddy in the jungle--Megs (Steve Moloney) as the main vehicle for preemptive comedy. Megs’ sheer humor and energy win Martha’s heart when she least expects it, and it postpones the drama’s supposed main event until well into Act II.

This is playwright craft 101, though it’s unlikely in real life that a Megs and a David, seeing each other for the first time in a while, would put off confronting each other about their worst wartime memory of losing their best pal Bobby during an air assault. The event triggers David’s grinding guilt.

Perhaps it’s our growing collective separation from the war, but in Borelli’s hands, the play is now much more interesting as a love story between Megs and Martha, with David as a side issue. The couple’s unlikely roundelay of affection is beautifully expressed by Moloney and especially Singer, an actor of considerable depth and insight. She is far truer to Metcalfe’s intention than was Kathy Bates’ Martha in the playwright’s 1989 screen adaptation (retitled “Jacknife”). Singer expresses most powerfully the story’s central premise of individual acceptance of oneself and others, leading to individual growth. She lets us see this pinched, sexually barren woman’s gradual flowering.

Though he lacks some of the irresistible charisma that’s called for, Moloney enjoys portraying the prowling drive of Megs, while Fitchpatrick, especially in the little physical details, conveys a feeling that David has holed up in this house or at the local bar for, well, forever.

Still, because of the play’s adherence to an older tradition of playwriting devices and maneuvers (something bypassed by bolder and fresher-feeling Vietnam plays), the redemptive finale is much less than it should be. Joshua Crowe’s lights are a bit bright, and his household set--full of cutout pieces to suggest a wall or door without a complete one--is a distracting oddity.

BE THERE

“Strange Snow,” Gene Bua Theatre for Life, 3435 Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 12. $15. (818) 569-3077. Running time: 2 hours.