During the Angst, a ‘Hush’ Settles

Set in a lonely seaside cottage somewhere in Britain, April de Angelis’ “Hush,” now at the Actors’ Gang, sets out to be one of those austere dramas in which characters carry loads of angst like burros on a mountain trail, quivering under their monumental burdens.

The play occupies the same bleak, monochromatic seaside milieu that playwright Sharman MacDonald favors. And, like MacDonald, De Angelis renders the territory with effective restraint--that is, until she blindsides us with crude dialectics and cheap histrionics.

On the one-year anniversary of her sister’s death by drowning, Louise (Michelle Arthur), a magazine editor, gathers at the dead woman’s beach cottage to memorialize the event with Rosa (Tracy Vilar), her bereaved niece and now her ward. Also present are Louise’s well-meaning but ineffectual lover Tony (Andrew Wheeler), a teacher who fancies himself an important novelist, and Denise (Tordy Clark), a lovelorn housecleaner who yearns to recast herself in some more glamorous mold.

Still reeling over her mother’s accident--or was it suicide?--rebellious Rosa loses herself in sex with Dogboy (Gary Kelley), a filthy and possibly homicidal itinerant she meets on the beach. It’s all mildly involving--then along comes Colin (Jesse Burch), the dead woman’s socialist lover, who wants to rescue Rosa from her yuppified aunt.

Colin’s sophomoric exchanges with Louise--either the moral center of the piece or capitalist scum, depending which side of the argument you come down on--are as unwieldy as Louise’s decision to trust the manic Dogboy and let him stay overnight without phoning the proper authorities.

Battling the play’s essential lameness, Bill Cusack and his co-director Clark wrest gripping performances from the cast, among which Kelley--naked through most of the play--unintentionally upstages all in his formidable orbit. Clark provides welcome comic relief as a distinctly downscale working-class prole, a sniveling Eliza with no Higgins in sight.

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* “Hush,” Actors’ Gang, El Centro space, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 11. $12. (323) 655-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.