Stage Light : Feelings Get Lost in Farce

Given the recent spate of show-biz plays (such as the dreadful “Fighting the Gorilla”) that seem intent on killing off the genre once and for all, it’s unfortunate the new play by Neil Koenigsberg, “Change Beds and Dance,” at the Secret Rose Theatre, isn’t about show business.

Neither was his first play, “Live Boys, Live Girls,” at the Cast Theatre in 1987.

Koenigsberg, a co-founder of Hollywood’s top publicity firm, PMK, and a movie producer (“A Walk on the Moon”), really knows the industry from both sides. But his second play is about another subject: middle-age love caught on a whim. It is set in the perfect place for overnight affairs, an Eastside Manhattan hotel, though Kenji Nakamura’s design suggests a step up from Motel 6 rather than “a first-class hotel,” as one of the characters calls it.

The play makes the affair credible, even though it’s between a Hollywood ad executive named Robert (Lee Ryan) and one of the hotel maids, Vera (Cathy Lind Hayes).

But the production feels underdeveloped and falls far short of the kind of true and honest melancholy it seems to want to invoke. It is torn between being an autumnal story of two lonely hearts and a badly conceived comedy.

The latter centers on Vinnie (David Lee Russek), the hotel’s fix-it man, a horny young guy who wants to feel up every female employee in the place but has only felt up Vera. He thinks that has given him license to go farther, but Vera gives him his unmistakable marching orders. Vinnie won’t listen and finds ways of getting back into the room she’s cleaning.

Koenigsberg tries to construct some farce out of this, but it has little to do with his main concern, except to highlight how silly and immature Vinnie is, which is obvious within 10 seconds of Russek’s being onstage. He serves only as a long and increasingly irritating distraction from Vera and Robert, and by the time the play zooms in on them, they don’t receive the time they deserve.

Robert has had a bad day at a meeting, where all his ideas were rejected, and his wife has scribbled him a divorce note. He returns to his room, catching Vera impulsively looking through his drawers. It just about sends him over the edge.

Koenigsberg’s dialogue is consistently weak and far below the level of charged excitement and wit this kind of material demands. But the way he shifts from the initial uncomfortable moment toward the pair’s deepening affection is the play’s greatest single stroke.

That affection is richly emboldened by Hayes, who under Perry King’s direction finds levels of guilt, surprise, tenderness and humor that go beyond the text. Hayes is so strong, that even though this is also Robert’s story, she makes the play into a character study of Vera. Her husband is entering prison for holding up a store, and she overpraises her son, who lives in a trailer park, as only a mother can do. Robert loves Vera’s authenticity--the opposite of ad work--and Ryan is better at expressing this than he is his character’s stress.

“Change Beds and Dance” could hardly be slighter, yet it feels overlong because its focus is out of whack. Sadness is a tone that plays are especially good at capturing. After missing the opportunity for too much of the show, Koenigsberg and company capture it just before the lights fade. Better late than never.

BE THERE

“Change Beds and Dance,” Secret Rose Theatre, 11246 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Ends Sunday. $10. (323) 969-4998. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.