Making a Mess of ‘Destiny’

As if their declining tech stock investments and worries about Johnny and Susie coming home alive from school each day aren’t enough, baby boomers can add dying young to their list of worries. That’s implied, if not underlined, by Mitch Coleman’s new play, “Messin’ With Destiny,” at Actors Forum Theatre.

The play is too lightweight, though, to really plumb the subject. Besides, Coleman seems to finally be more interested in attempting a redo of “Heaven Can Wait,” in which our hero is on the verge of being dead but first wants to make things right here on Earth with help from Upstairs. Gordon (Shelly Kurtz) grabs for one last chance at life, and the play grabs for some kind of consistent tone. Gordon is far more successful than the play, which is a jumble. The first scene, with Gordon finding himself in a hospital administered by quacks and hysterics, is as desperately unfunny a stab at comedy as we’ve seen in a while.

Things fortunately calm down a bit in subsequent scenes as Gordon’s high school buddy Dave (Sam Upton), who died in a car crash at 17, tries to help his pal with the heavenly transition. Gordon refuses to buy Dave’s report that his whole life and death were preordained and wants to revisit key people in his life to see if he could have done anything differently. Dave gives Gordon 30 minutes.

Under Audrey M. Singer’s direction, the minutes sometimes pass amusingly but mostly slowly. Gordon’s reunion with his only girlfriend, Tracy (Marni Raitt) goes badly, and a meeting with his parents (Nick O’Connor and Carol Dougherty) goes worse. No wonder Gordon is forever beating himself over the head and stressing himself out: Dad thought Gordon was worthless and Mom declares she’s a lesbian. But like so much of the comedy here, that last bomb comes out of nowhere, like jokes thrown up against a wall to see if any will stick.

Coleman is fairly new at the playwriting game, and it’s clear he needs to work on crafting his vision of neurotic mortality and finding his own voice for gallows humor. He’s studied Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Buck Henry and “Twilight Zone” episodes, but the results are awfully derivative and far from surprising.

Kurtz, who would seem to be fine as an actor expressing neuroses or mortality or both, isn’t the best choice for a character who’s 44, and he has a bad habit of lapsing into mugging when he should be finding the sadness underneath the joke or the humor underneath the stress.

Upton is by far the strongest player here, suggesting a blissed-out dude ready to crank up Steely Dan on the eight-track and then, in a sudden shift near the end, becoming a grown-up version of Dave that’s convincingly greasy.

Kenji Nakamura’s set fills the walls with blue skies and clouds, lending the show a nice soupcon of poetry.

BE THERE

“Messin’ With Destiny,” Actors Forum Theatre 10655 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends May 12. $15. (818) 906-0675 or (818) 506-0600. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.