‘Bosoms and Neglect’ Revels in Odd Recesses of Black Comedy

Manhattan in August. The shrinks have abandoned their patients, cruelly. O, to “get out of this neurotic city!”

So says one of playwright John Guare’s New Yorkers searching for meaning, some balm in Gilead, in “Bosoms and Neglect.” It remains a painful comedy after all the years since its three-performance Broadway plotz in 1979.

And it’s still richly, genuinely strange. The strikingly designed South Coast Repertory revival directed by David Chambers has much the same quality. If it falls shy of complete success, it’s because two of the three performances have yet to locate the full range of Guare’s zigzagging tonal extremes.

In the standout portrayal, Lynn Milgrim plays Henny, the blind 83-year-old cancer patient who has vexed her son, Scooper (Tim Choate), all his addled life. The cancer is a recent revelation. As the play begins, 38-year-old Scooper relays to rare-books dealer Deirdre (Cindy Katz) the particulars of his mother’s disease, which she kept a secret for two years. Just as Scooper was about to embark on a vacation with his married mistress, voila: Henny revealed to him her ravaged cancerous breast.

It’s a garish opening, and (according to Guare) straight from his own life. From there, “Bosoms and Neglect” settles deceptively into more familiar theatrical territory. Scooper has picked up Deirdre in an ambivalent sort of way. For years (and, as they find out, for different fees) they have seen the same revered analyst, Dr. James.

It is only natural these two have found each other in Deirdre’s Upper East Side apartment, depicted by scenic designer Darcy Scanlin as a gorgeous abstract creamy-white fantasy. The penthouse is something out of the Astaire/Rogers pictures, with precarious stacks of all-white books everywhere. On the back wall is a dizzying overhead view of hospital waiting and recovery rooms, the setting of Act 2. York Kennedy’s lighting cuts the whipped cream with surprising dashes of color. It’s risky, inspired design work all around.

Act 1 brings Scooper and Deirdre together by way of their mutual admiration for the unseen Dr. James, then by lust, then by violence. The psycho-banter (at one point Deirdre lays claim to having had “one of the great uninstitutionalized breakdowns”) clearly inspired such playwrights as Christopher Durang (“Beyond Therapy”) and, more recently, Nicky Silver, a wild hare who has received both main stage and second-stage productions at SCR.

“Bosoms and Neglect” is a scherzo followed by a fugue. Act 2 takes us to the hospital where the miraculously recovering Henny--all those prayers to St. Jude paid off--is being visited by Scooper (stabbed by Deirdre at the end of Act 1) and Deirdre (who broke her foot in the melee). Guare shifts to the “neglect” theme, not without grinding the gears.

Guare’s a first-rate wit and cliche-dodger by nature, so he makes the disparate halves nearly whole. The result is anything but easy, for either performer or theatergoer. The ground keeps shifting under his play’s feet.

Dominated by mad-old-woman hair and a look of unearned optimism, Milgrim invests such arias as Henny’s final monologue with the pang of truth. At her best, Katz is impressive as well, more comfortable with the openly dramatic moments than the brittle high comedy. Something in Katz’s demeanor suggests groundedness, a sensible, earthbound quality, at odds with the literary-obsessive Deirdre.

Choate’s Scooper is an amusing worm. Yet the physical shtick isn’t much. Pushing his voice into a fake-falsetto, the actor’s brand of frantic farceur-ship sometimes strains for effect. Director Chambers, however, wisely stresses rhythm and speed throughout, and all three performers oblige. And in this production, the design work becomes an additional, vivid character. (A handy definition of good stage design, period.)

In “Bosoms and Neglect,” you sense Guare trying to address some deeply personal matters within the confines of chipper black comedy. The writer has become best known for the more recent, purring comedy of manners “Six Degrees of Separation.” But fine and stage-worthy as that play is, there’s something in Guare’s wilder, earlier material that will continue to test the abilities and imaginations of the braver interpreters among us. “Bosoms and Neglect” isn’t a neglected modern masterwork, exactly. But it is a key patch in a crazy-quilt career.

* “Bosoms and Neglect,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays-Fridays, 7:45 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 and 7:45 p.m. Ends Feb. 25. $26-$47. (714) 708-5555. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Bosoms and Neglect

Cindy Katz: Deirdre

Tim Choate: Scooper

Lynn Milgrim: Henny

Written by John Guare. Directed by David Chambers. Scenic design by Darcy Scanlin. Costumes by Shigeru Yaji. Lighting by York Kennedy. Sound by B.C. Keller. Production manager Jeff Gifford. Stage manager Andy Tighe.