A truth beyond memory

Deceptively modest in scale, Julia Cho’s “The Winchester House,” now receiving its world premiere at the Theatre @ Boston Court, is actually a surprisingly dense, “Rashomon”-like drama about a young woman’s increasingly uncertain remembrance of a molestation. Both a poignant memory play and a trenchant indictment of the essential unreliability of memory, “Winchester” toys with easy assumptions about morality -- and reality.

Via (Kimiko Gelman), a sometime lounge singer adrift in her own unrealized potential, narrates the piece, contributing an occasional song along the way -- thematically belabored musical numbers that seem oddly out of context in this otherwise delicate framework.

In spite of that, Via is a compelling protagonist whose life has been seriously blighted by her adolescent encounter with her adult neighbor, John Bergin (Arye Gross) -- an event that we immediately assume to be sexual, although Cho is exasperatingly coy about coming to that particular point.

After her brother Ernest (effectively underplayed by Greg Watanabe) tells Via that Bergin is terminally ill, Via decides to meet once more with her despised antagonist. But Bergin’s vastly different account of the “incident in the barn” causes Via to reevaluate her own painful recollections.

The excellent cast includes Dian Kobayashi as Via’s chatty yet lonely mother, Nelson Mashita as her emotionally repressed father, and Laura Wernette as Bergin’s wife, whom Via remembers as an elegant role model but who was actually a hopeless alcoholic -- another example of Via’s youthful misperceptions.

Abetted by superlative production elements, most notably Jose Lopez’s dreamlike lighting, John Zalewski’s haunting sound, and Susan Gratch’s cleverly utilitarian set, director Chay Yew gracefully balances the play’s opposing realities.

Also perfect is Gross, who colors the compassionate, attractively cerebral Bergin with a creepiness so faint, we can’t tell if it’s really there. For Bergin, Via was his greatest love. For Via, Bergin was a violator. Cho wisely leaves it for us to decide just whose perceptions come closest to the truth.

“The Winchester House,” The Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends June 18. $30. (626) 683-6883. www.bostoncourt.org. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.