It’s Snappy as ‘Sin,’ but Production Still Falls Short

Helicopter traffic reporter Avery Bly (Rose of Sharon Stoneall) has hit a turbulent patch, metaphorically speaking. Her brother Gerard (Jeff Garvin) is dying of AIDS; her estranged physician husband, Michael (Shawn McGorrian), is boozing himself into indigence; and her recently promoted boss, Jason (Frank Bond), is proving a monster of neurotic authoritarianism.

Worse, Avery’s own intolerance and perfectionism keep her stranded on a moral height--a lonely precipice that, thus far, no friend or loved one has been able to scale. But it’s 1989, this is San Francisco--and the rigid Avery is about to be severely shaken in more ways than one.

Despite its slim plot, Wendy MacLeod’s “Sin” at the Hudson Avenue Theatre is a mordant, potentially funny piece that contains scads of snappy dialogue, a bevy of vivid characters and a somewhat timeworn conceit: Each person with whom Avery interacts personifies one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Her binge-eating girlfriend (Anity M. Janow) is appropriately gluttonous; her blind date (Billy Jack Carter) oozes with self-serving greed; her dissatisfied co-worker (Gary Rubenstein) is riddled with paranoiac envy; a bar-hopping poet (Peter Janosi) seethes with unrequited lust, and so on.

Unfortunately, the flaws in MacLeod’s belabored allegory are unnecessarily amplified in Barbara Cameron’s terminally turgid staging. Even making allowances for the multitude of opening night technical glitches, this production plods along like a lost soul, with director and actors alike opting for the most obvious choices and taking their sweet time about it.

Although roughly competent and certainly pleasant to look at, Stoneall proves particularly problematic in the crucial central role of Avery, who appears in virtually every chatty scene. Granted, Avery functions as a sort of straight woman to her more extravagant comic counterparts, but she requires a degree of depth and nuance that Stoneall fails to deliver. In this squandered opportunity, MacLeod’s scathing lines fade into a dim blueprint of what could have been.

*

* “Sin,” Hudson Avenue Theatre, 6537 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays and Fridays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 11. $18 to $20. (323) 856-4200. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.