The telltale heart

During a recent rehearsal at Geffen Playhouse, director Randall Arney appears frustrated after Nancy Travis and Mark Deakins, the lead characters in “Boy Gets Girl,” finish a run-through of a crucial scene.

Arney, also the Geffen’s artistic director, wants to try a new approach: Instead of having Deakins’ character, Tony, stride toward Travis’ character, Theresa, speaking to her with frank directness, this time Arney wants Deakins to sit several feet away, hanging his head like an embarrassed schoolkid, delivering his line as less a confrontation than an apology.

The tall, dark-haired Deakins towers over the perky, strawberry blond Travis; both actors and director agree that if Deakins comes at her, his imposing physicality implies a threat regardless of his intentions -- especially because his words are so inappropriate for a conversation between two people who barely know each other.

“Well, you said you hadn’t dated anybody in a long time, and ... I was wondering, are you afraid of intimacy or something?” Deakins’ Tony says hesitantly -- this time with downcast eyes, an apologetic half-smile, from a safe position several feet outside Travis’ personal space. He’s still a Doberman, but in this attempt a big puppy on a leash.

It works better. After all, it’s too soon in the story for Theresa to suspect that last night’s clumsy blind date will soon become her stalker.

Right now, Tony’s just an attractive if slightly boneheaded charmer, trying in his own awkward way to defrost a workaholic Manhattan journalist who, the audience knows, needs it badly. He’s the love-struck “boy” in the romantic movie who always does, after a series of comic misfires, get the girl.

Suffice it to say that Rebecca Gilman’s “Boy Gets Girl,” opening Wednesday at the Geffen, twists that fantasy into something entirely different. The cast also includes James Farentino as aging pornographer Les Kennkat.

The play, which premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 1999, is one on the long list of Gilman plays that deal with social issues, including “Spinning Into Butter” (racism in academia, at Laguna Playhouse in 2001), “Crime of the Century” (a portrait of the eight Chicago nurses brutally killed by Richard Speck in 1966), “The Glory of Living” (serial murder) and “Blue Surge” (teen prostitutes).

Gilman says she was inspired to write “Boy Gets Girl” after seeing a newspaper article about women stalked by husbands or boyfriends who were police officers. “It had a sidebar that said: ‘So, you are being stalked -- here are things to do.’ I read down the list, and it went from getting an unlisted phone number to moving and changing your name. It just seemed so drastic and scary to me. And I was thinking about the ways in which women have traditionally been objectified in our culture.

“I guess I was thinking about the sort of fine line between romance and obsession, the ways in which we see, in movies and plays and stories, how the typical romance is played out, how what can be really sweet can be really creepy with a subtle change of tone.”

Director Arney says that he and Gilman have been in constant contact, piecing together a new version of the play that reinstates some material cut from her original script for the published version. “To improve momentum, they cut some colors, specifically character colors, and in some cases it cuts too close to the bone,” Arney says.

Arney calls directing the interplay between Theresa and Tony a balancing act much like the awkward business of real-life dating and sexual politics. “It’s a game, and we all have these ideas of what the game is -- and yet how brutal the game can become if one side doesn’t play it the same way as the other,” Arney muses.

“I don’t want to preach to people. I want it to be a fun, exciting ride for people, and it’s often very funny, but when you go away and think about what you’ve seen, it makes men and women alike think about some of these issues,” he continues. “How does Tony’s behavior compare to someone who drives by a girl’s house four times to see if her light’s on? All of the things that happen in the play fall somewhere on the continuum of our own behavior.”

In a post-rehearsal interview, Travis and Deakins agree. “The play examines the attitudes people have about male-female relationships, and boundaries, and what courtship is and isn’t,” Travis says. “What are the ‘rules’ about dating -- do you send flowers, and what does it mean; do you sleep with the guy on the first date or don’t you? Do you return the call, as the woman? Where did those rules come from, and who made them up?”

Deakins finishes her sentence. “And they are constantly changing. The boundaries change on us,” he says. “We’ve talked a little bit in rehearsal about harassment in the workplace, and it is a shifting boundary -- one year something is ‘harassment,’ the next year it’s really not. Corporations change and adjust their policies, and people just kind of seem to roll with it.”

Travis laughs when that subject comes up. “I was on this show where we got this notice about harassment, and it listed all these things that we, as a group of actors, were guilty of -- all of it, joyfully. Similarly, all of the rules are relative if you’re attracted to somebody. If you’re attracted to somebody, the rules don’t apply.”

Travis, a sitcom veteran who this season became the new love interest for Ted Danson on CBS’ “Becker,” says she wanted the role of Theresa for the opportunity to play the complex emotions of the mating game. Travis is also a founding member of off-Broadway’s Naked Angels, and she says television rarely affords that opportunity. “It’s fun to play somebody with a point of view who is not just the accomplice or the sidekick or the wife,” she says. “I often find that in theater you find the opportunity to play characters who have many dimensions.”

Deakins, who has appeared in “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Measure for Measure” at the Ahmanson Theatre, read for both the role of Tony and the role of Mercer, Theresa’s nice-guy colleague. He has had to learn to approach the character of Tony as a warped sort of “nice guy.”

“I guess when I approach him I don’t really think of him as a stalker,” he observes. “I think of him as a guy who believes that he’s on the right track, that he can win her. I have to kind of approach him that way. This is how you get a woman; this is how you show someone you love her.”

Travis adds that the issues raised by “Boy Gets Girl” are particularly resonant for Hollywood actors. “The notion of obsession, particularly in this town, is such a palpable thing,” she muses. “People think that because they see somebody on TV or in the movies that they know them, that that person is attracted to them or would want to be with them if only they could meet.”

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‘Boy Gets Girl’

Where: Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood

When: Opens on Wednesday: Tuesdays-Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 4 and 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m.

Ends: May 11

Price: $28 to $36

Contact: (310) 208-5454