Playful Prevarication Blankets ‘Kevin’s Bed’

Spinning off the familiar 16th century proverb “as you make your bed, you must lie on it,” Irish playwright Bernard Farrell’s “Kevin’s Bed” offers brisk gusts of comedy in its U.S. premiere at Laguna Playhouse.

The double meaning of “lie” indicates where most of the laughs, well, lie. If you enjoy watching characters fabricate whoppers to get out of awkward situations, only to find the tales unraveling later, you’ll enjoy most of “Kevin’s Bed.”

This sort of situation has a storied dramatic past, from commedia to “Seinfeld.” When American playgoers think of brazen liars in Irish settings, however, they think of remote, rural villages, like the ones in “The Playboy of the Western World” or “The Beauty Queen of Leenane.”

*

In “Kevin’s Bed,” we get an updated, domesticated, suburbanized version of the same comic strain, and Farrell’s treatment of this condition is far gentler than was Martin McDonagh’s in “Leenane” (which was seen just a few weeks ago, a few miles away, at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa).

The play has a few loose ends. With a 25-year gap between its major scenes, some of the questions about what happened in the interim are not fully answered. One episode involving Kevin’s brother John sounds more serious than most of the other events during that period, and we hear only allusive references to it. Generally Farrell prefers relishing the spectacle of familial deceptions without brooding too much about the downside.

To describe the plot with precision would be to give away some key narrative twists and turns that are better enjoyed in the theater. But we can say that the play is structured around the 50th anniversary of Doris (Carol Mansell) and Dan (Redmond M. Gleeson) in 1998, with a big flashback to their 1973 silver anniversary throughout most of Act One.

The earlier festivities are enlivened for the audience, though marred for Doris and Dan, by the return of younger son Kevin (Patrick Lawlor) from Rome, where he has been studying for the priesthood. He has had a change of heart.

Despite the title, Kevin isn’t the only character who strays from the truth, nor is he incorrigible in his falsehoods. In fact, he betrays an opposing flaw as well: the inability to keep a secret. His digressions from honesty stem mostly from a desire to keep others happy, not from braggadocio. Most of the other characters who lie have similarly benign motives.

John (David Whalen), two years Kevin’s senior, is a teacher who has been dating Betty (Geraldine Hughes) ever since Kevin went off to Rome. Although John is more dashing and handsome than his brother, Betty’s first crush was Kevin, and she still has a yen for him. Betty’s mother (Bairbre Dowling) is one of Doris’ best friends.

Into this conventional Irish home, on that fateful day in 1973, strides an Italian (Flavia Saravalli) whom Kevin has met in Rome. Although she can’t speak the local language, she knows how to express herself powerfully. Saravalli’s commanding style is perfect.

The 25-year gap between scenes not only is problematic in the plot but also provides a challenge to the actors’ abilities to switch between older and younger selves. Mansell and Gleeson are the most successful at this, convincingly moving from their 70s to their 40s and back again, assisted by costumer Dwight Richard Odle. Mansell is very funny as she tries to cope with Italian, and Gleeson overcomes a few tentative line readings at the beginning to endow Dan with the most assured comic timing of anyone onstage by the end.

*

Lawlor, though appropriately diffident and harried, also makes Kevin likable. But he fails to make a convincing age transition. He’s handicapped by transforming onstage, with his back turned, as opposed to those who get to grow older or younger backstage.

The Laguna stage and Odle’s set are too spacious for the kitchen of an Irish postal worker’s old house, but the decorative details are telling and true. The evening is a little too long, but Andrew Barnicle’s direction keeps it lively.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

* “Kevin’s Bed,” Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends May 14. $31 to $40. (949) 497-ARTS). Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

Carol Mansell: Doris

Redmond M. Gleeson:: Dan

Patrick Lawlor: Kevin

David Whalen: John

Bairbre Dowling: Pauline

Geraldine Hughes: Betty

Flavia Saravalli: Maria

Karen Stapleton: Cecily

Written by Bernard Farrell. Directed by Andrew Barnicle. Set and costumes by Dwight Richard Odle. Lighting by Paulie Jenkins. Sound by David Edwards. Stage manager Alice Harkins.