Characters Held Hostage by Playwright

Few situations would seem to be more natural for the stage than a political hostage-taking.

Think of the drama that could be wrung from a dramatization of the Lebanese hostage crisis surrounding Terry Anderson and William Buckley in the mid-1980s.

Playwright Lee Blessing has long had a taste for making foreign policy dramatic, and he takes on the Anderson-Buckley events in “Two Rooms,” with several twists.

The outcome in “Two Rooms” ends less happily than it did for Anderson because Blessing is less interested in Middle East politics than in how his American characters respond under pressure. It is these characters who make the play much less than it could have been.

Director Sarah Knight’s staging at the Sanford Meisner Center marks the play’s Valley premiere, but it’s essentially a transfer of her recent production at Actors’ Lab in Hollywood. It is moody, contemplative and fairly well cast with precise and apt lighting by Keith Endo. Most Valley productions in the past year could do with just a share of the craft shown here.

Then why does “Two Rooms” finally feel like thin goods?

The title refers to the pair of rooms in which things are played out--the Beirut cell in which blindfolded Michael (Christopher Warren) is held, and the home office where his suffering, patient wife, Lainie (Amy Henry), waits. Both rooms are bare of furniture, and it seems as if Lainie is emptying her whole life so she can be a kind of sympathy co-hostage with Michael.

Blessing suggests something interesting with this--how the hostage’s loved one wills herself into her own imprisonment--and then he drops the thread of this theme for much less interesting threads.

One involves a pesky nudge of a journalist, Walker (Daniel Hutchison), who may as well have the word “EXPLOITER” tattooed across his forehead when he enters. Lainie’s first instinct--to basically tell him which window he can jump out of--proves the right one, as Walker predictably leads Lainie toward media publicity, false hope and disappointment. Walker, in the end, wins, because he gets his story.

Blessing’s contempt for this character is surpassed only by his contempt for Ellen Van Oss (Wylie Small), Lainie’s liaison to the State Department. She flaunts her officiousness in a way that’s so cold and repellent that acting the role must be like sitting in a freezer for two hours.

Only for a couple of brief moments does Ellen’s facade crack to let her humanity seep through, but she’s mostly wound up to spout stuff as only a bureaucrat machine can. Small probably does as much with this as any actor could.

Lainie in the hands of these two becomes passive to the point of near absurdity, and imagines being with Michael. It is only in these scenes of imagination, oddly enough, where “Two Rooms” sounds real and honest.

Blessing strips away the false-toned dialogue uttered by his wooden symbols of the hated press and government and gets down to basics between two people. It’s helped here immensely by Warren, whose intensity of feeling allows Henry to break free and express herself.

Characters, too, can be held hostage by playwrights with agendas, and it’s nice when Lainie is briefly given the light of day.

BE THERE

“Two Rooms,” Sanford Meisner Center, 5124 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends April 22. $15. (818) 509-9651. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.