A winding ramble in ‘The Country’

The title “The Country” means the countryside, not a particular country. Playwright Martin Crimp apparently intended to contrast the city and the country, as so many of his fellow British writers before him have done.

His characters are city dwellers who move to the country but ultimately fail to enjoy its storied bucolic bliss -- although it eventually becomes clear that their problems date back to their urban days.

In the American premiere of this spare, slight drama at La Jolla Playhouse, director Lisa Peterson and set designer Rachel Hauck don’t take the rural theme too literally. Hauck’s house features some handsome natural wood and a dizzying spiral staircase -- with no banister -- that ascends into the gloom above the stage. But we remain indoors, so we don’t see fields or cows or anything else that clearly signals “country.”

This is just as well, for the play needs all the help it can get in terms of expanding its meanings beyond the literal. Otherwise it seems little more than an elliptical but basically garden-variety domestic drama.

As the play opens, Corinne (Catherine Dent) is interrogating her husband, Richard (Gary Cole), a doctor who has brought home a young, sleeping woman named Rebecca. He claims he found her lying on the side of the road.

His story begins to unravel fairly soon. Much to the shock of Corinne, Richard and Rebecca have a long-shared history that apparently included drugs as well as sex.

The word “apparently” pops up a lot when thinking about this play, because Crimp is careful not to tie up many loose ends -- or middles. For example, after four scenes in which the marriage of Richard and Corinne begins to break up, the last scene has them back together, two months later, with no ready explanation of how they reconciled or what happened to Rebecca.

Even though this scene looks more cheerful, with a band of yellow daylight across the back of the stage, this isn’t necessarily a happy ending. Or an unhappy one.

It’s that kind of a play -- with plenty of possibly ambiguous hints, dropped by characters who have trouble communicating with each other, even though they question each other rigorously about precise shades of meaning.

The adjective “Pinter-esque” inevitably comes to mind. In an interview in the program, Crimp notes his admiration for Harold Pinter and acknowledges that “Pinter invented or adapted certain tools which other writers are free to use.” But Crimp himself doesn’t feel “particularly close to his work.”

Sorry, but Crimp’s work does feel particularly close to Pinter’s -- and in a derivative, secondhand way. Although “The Country” is presumably supposed to be insidiously creepy and darkly funny, it emerges as merely mildly intriguing. There are no chills down the spine or bursts of uncontrollable hilarity.

With such half-revealed characters, the performances aren’t expected to be definitive, but each of the actors skillfully etches a distinct part of a character.

Dent’s Corinne is probably the most complex, nicely balancing an inquisitorial instinct with a desire to raise her kids in peace and get an occasional sign of affection from her husband.

Good luck with the latter -- Cole’s Richard is usually sweatily evasive or simply “blank,” to use his wife’s word. Surely a couple of references to his famous sense of humor are meant sardonically.

Emily Bergl’s Rebecca is a brash upstart who doesn’t bother with being discreet, compared to the others. The stage directions reveal that she’s American, although this becomes explicit in the play itself only via her accent. She’s a history student who is drawn to the area’s Roman ruins.

We hear a lot about Richard’s unseen boss Morris, who starts quoting Latin in the most unusual places, we’re told. He sounds like such a character, in the larger sense of the word, that it’s too bad he’s not an onstage character.

That there is no intermission helps sustain the modicum of tension that the play arouses.

*

‘The Country’

Where: La Jolla Playhouse, Mandell Weiss Forum, La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla

When: Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m.

Ends: Aug. 31

Price: $39-$49

Contact: (858) 550-1010

Running Time: 1 hour, 25 minutes

Gary Cole...Richard

Catherine Dent...Corinne

Emily Bergl...Rebecca

By Martin Crimp. Directed by Lisa Peterson. Set by Rachel Hauck. Costumes by Joyce Kim Lee. Lighting by Christopher Akerlind. Sound by Mark Bennett. Stage manager Lori J. Weaver.