Some Restraint Could Cure ‘Psychopathia’

Arthur has a problem. He is a penniless artist, about 10 days from his marriage to the voluptuous Texas bombshell Lucille. It might be a disaster. He calls on his friend Howard to be his best man. He also calls on Howard to visit his psychiatrist, Dr. Block, and retrieve his father’s socks, which the good doctor has stolen. They are Arthur’s fetish. He cannot perform sexually without them. His marriage to Lucille could be doomed.

This is the setup in “Psychopathia Sexualis,” which is at Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana. It’s John Patrick Shanley’s comic ode to some of the reasons for marrying. It’s a different motif under Shanley’s pen than his film “Moonstruck,” but then most of his stage plays are a bit unusual.

“Psychopathia” is a frequently very funny exercise in which Shanley almost approaches Neil Simon’s glibness, albeit in a slightly hipper vein. He knows his laughs, his surprise plot twists, and he has insights into male goofiness, and that’s where most of the big laughs in this play happen.

In comedy, even slapstick, restraint is what hits the funny bone. Director Patricia L. Terry’s tempos throughout are bright and frolicsome and her sense of comic rhythm constant. What she hasn’t been able to do is embed a sense of restraint in some of her cast.

Zack Durant, as the terrified Arthur, who would rather die than approach his marriage bed without the moral support of his dad’s argyles, has a habit of hitting each line heavily and just on the surface. There is no subtext behind his readings, no inner thought, and no subtlety. He looks as though he’s still early in rehearsal.

John Bolen is just the opposite. Bolen has built a solid, naturalistic character, flawed only slightly by his tendency to veer toward a British accent early on, which happily fades as the evening progresses. The wide shifts of his character’s moods and priorities are shaped well, especially when he breaks down, almost in tears in Dr. Block’s office, under the good doctor’s outlandish treatment.

Ana Maria Montoya seems uncomfortable as Howard’s pretentious wife, who spills the beans about the socks to Arthur’s fiancee, but Susan E. Taylor hits all the right notes as that Texas tornado. Her laid-back performance balanced by a cowgirl brashness, has a nice edge of only slightly beleaguered hesitation about the marriage.

The performance is almost stolen by Todd Fuessel’s seemingly obnoxious Dr. Block, who appears more in need of help than the others but is only doing his duty to his client. Fuessel’s strength is a rewarding sense of detail behind his character, a subtext that makes Block’s bullying tactics logical and believable.

* “Psychopathia Sexualis,” Alternative Repertory Theatre, 125-B N. Broadway, Santa Ana. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. Ends June 24. $22-$25. (714) 836-7929.