Memory play is a little mixed up

Theatergoers will probably know if this Road Theatre premiere of “Backwards in High Heels” is for them, depending on whether they recognize the origin of the play’s title (hint: Fred and Ginger).

A memory play set in a sprawling, dusty attic of a set, Jim Henry’s episodic chamber piece views the values and regrets of the Greatest Generation through the lens of a 60-year marriage. Young plumber-in-training Michael Angelo Keeler (“Lost” regular Sam Anderson) eyes the fetching Genevieve Horner (Taylor Gilbert) at a 1940s dance, and they quickly team up for the rituals of white American middle-class, midcentury life: secret premarital sex, camping trips, their daughter’s engagement, Saturday night bowling, menopause, the first television sets, cancer, bifocals, Alzheimer’s.

Gracefully directed by Ken Sawyer, the cast transitions smoothly from one segment to another, and it is the performances -- especially from the vibrant Gilbert -- that endow “Backward” with a credible sense of lived-in reality.

But while the play may begin the beguine, it only dances around its ostensible subject. “Backwards” can’t decide whether it wants to be a gentle series of marital vignettes or a tougher, more jaundiced rebuttal of the mythologies surrounding the seemingly tidy lives of American gentiles. Henry just leaves too many questions unexplored. Why does Genevieve stay with Michael after he begins to drink and withdraw from her? Why and how did they reconcile after months of separation in the middle of the marriage? And what does Michael’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel reveal about the couple’s different ways of coping with their daughter’s tragic death?

We never find out, which ultimately makes “Backwards” an awkward marathon instead of a revelatory dance to the music of time.

“Backwards in High Heels,” Road Theatre at Lankershim Arts Center, 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 29. $25. (866) 811-4111. Running time: 2 hours.