‘Debt’ Relays the Casualties of Life in Los Angeles

Late in Sarah Koskoff’s “Debt,” now at Glaxa Studios, Trace Turville slips into a monologue about her shiny, unhappy life in Los Angeles. The character of Emily, a struggling actress, has returned to her Midwestern home on the eve of its sale brought on by family debts. Reluctantly, Turville’s Emily opens up just enough to allow a glimpse of the demons inside. The character, a fiend for psychotherapeutic platitudes, has kept up a surreal poised front--but at a price.

Playwright Koskoff’s 70-minute exercise in domestic absurdism isn’t concerned primarily with Emily’s dilemma. Yet, thanks to Turville’s delicate, precise, gently stylized performance--in sync with what’s most interesting about the text--Emily’s monologue is what you remember the next day.

Koskoff is one of six members of the Oxblood playwrights’ collective. In “Debt,” she creates an anxious triangle: Emily; her widowed and chilly mother (Tina Preston); and maladaptive neighbor Joe (Jeffrey McDaniel), a more verbal variation on Boo Radley.

Director Wesley Walker heightens the play’s dream logic with what might be called “living pauses”--tableaux encapsulating the unsettling power plays afoot. Don Preston’s densely packed music and sound design (akin to Alan Splet’s sound for David Lynch’s movies) unsettles as well.

The rapt atmosphere isn’t fully sustained. Preston’s wild-eyed mother is fairly routine, and McDaniel’s increasingly threatened shut-in doesn’t build on its initial promise. But “Debt” reveals a worthwhile playwright’s voice.

And the eloquent Turville graces “Debt” with a subtly perfect portrayal of one more L.A. casualty.

* “Debt,” Glaxa Studios, 3707 Sunset Blvd. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. (no performances Thanksgiving weekend). Ends Dec. 11. $12. (323) 692-7746. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.