Theater Beat : ‘Watch’ a Dramatic Change for Cast Theatre

After five years of nothing but Justin Tanner comedies at Hollywood’s Cast Theatre, the producers clearly wanted a decisive change of pace. Their new season still includes Tanner, but the opener, Greg Suddeth’s “End of the Watch,” is a virtually chuckle-free portrait of lowlifes inhabiting a seedy nightclub.

The consequences of a tragic shooting weigh heavily on the play’s troubled quartet of social outcasts. Nolan (Jack Kehler), the club’s guilt-racked owner, is so well insulated against feeling that he’s grown numb, even to the prospect of abandonment by his jaded stripper wife, Darla (Shawna Casey). His new business partner (Gill Gayle) awkwardly angles to fill Nolan’s amorous shoes with Darla. Ominously, Nolan’s wheelchair-using former partner (Robert Romanus) harbored similar ideas in his ambulatory days.

Writer-director Suddeth skillfully employs shifting chronology and elliptical plotting to keep us puzzling over events and relationships that link these characters’ pasts and present. They even manage to find their way to some effective moments of poignant human contact. Despite the best efforts of a uniformly talented cast, however, the relentlessly dreamlike, introspective dialogue keeps them talking at--rather than to--each other. With little resemblance to real conversation, these ruminations often prove more ponderous than pondering.

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* “End of the Watch,” Cast-at-the-Circle Theatre, 800 N. El Centro Ave., Hollywood. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 9 p.m. Ends Nov. 7. $13.50 to 17.50. (323) 462-0265. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.