A duel over loss, love

THE scene is set for yet another knock-down, drag-out brawl between red and blue state mentalities. Two middle-age couples, one from Northern California, the other from Ohio, square off over evolution and the Bible, medical marijuana and the right of the terminally ill to end their lives.

But Jane Anderson has even more profound concerns brewing in her new play, “The Quality of Life,” which had its world premiere Wednesday at the Geffen Playhouse’s Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theater. Front-loaded with topical concerns, the play is ultimately more interested in tracking enduring dilemmas of the heart -- how to love and grieve, how to let go and remember.

As a wise critic once said of Ibsen’s dramas, you must look for the ideas underneath the ideas. Anderson, whose previous issue-laden plays include “Looking for Normal” and “Defying Gravity,” has so many conceits percolating in her latest that it can sometimes be hard to figure out where she’s going. And to be frank, it’s not always clear that she has a direction. The upside to this is that her play can’t be accused of being schematic. The downside is that it lacks a sense of inevitability, which is another way of saying that it’s not elegantly shaped.

But “The Quality of Life” has a genuine thematic depth that couldn’t be more welcome in our age of surface distraction. And the production, directed by the playwright and featuring a top-notch cast, finds the three-dimensionality in roles that could tilt toward stereotypes in less sensitive hands.

The story begins in Ohio, with Bill (Scott Bakula) and Dinah (JoBeth Williams) trying to get through another day after the murder of their only daughter. They make polite small talk, but it’s obvious that they’re trapped in a living nightmare. Dinah, still prone to episodes of uncontrollable crying, suggests that they fly to the West Coast to visit her cousin Jeannette (Laurie Metcalf), a sexy earth-mother poet who has lost her home in a raging brush fire and whose left-wing academic husband, Neil (Dennis Boutsikaris), is facing late-stage cancer.

This isn’t a case of misery loving company so much as misery seeking empathetic understanding. Trouble is, these two couples are politically, psychologically and spiritually miles apart.

Bill has turned to the church for an answer to his suffering and comes off as a born-again fanatic to Jeannette and Neil, who are secular liberals and content to live on their charred property in a yurt that they’ve fixed up like an Arabian tent. (The set design by Francois-Pierre Couture creates an appropriately otherworldly environment.) Though Dinah is more open-minded about her cousin’s aging-hippie ways, her strait-laced husband is tied up in knots: One minute he wants to save these unbelievers, the next he wants to tell them that they’re damned for eating seaweed and not accepting Christ as their redeemer.

Anderson leavens her somber material with wry observations about the ensuing culture clash. Bill, who’s already disturbed that wine’s being enjoyed at lunch, has to excuse himself when Neil smokes some grass to relieve his pain. Dinah brings crafty gifts, including a candle that Neil mistakes for Buddha hands. “I think they’re supposed to be Christ’s,” Dinah answers nervously, “but that’s all right. However you want to see it.”

The plot leaps, somewhat implausibly, to a startling revelation: Jeannette has decided that she’s going to end her life at the same time her husband ends his. The plan is for a joint suicide, one to escape physical helplessness, the other to escape loneliness and mourning. Jeannette claims that her time on Earth has been satisfying enough and that she has no desire to carry on without her soul mate. She also can’t tolerate the possibility of growing old and infirm on her own. But though some explanatory family history is offered for her extreme views, the arguments simply don’t ring true for a hardy woman who can reasonably expect a quarter of a century of vitality ahead of her.

In fact, this whole crisis has a cooked-up feeling, as though Anderson felt obliged to give us something “dramatic” to sink our teeth into, a cliffhanger to ensure we return after intermission. There really was no need, because her more subtle exploration of relationships and how they survive -- or don’t -- the shock and shame of traumatic events provides more than enough drama.

Metcalf spikes the punch of Anderson’s play with her colorful, manic portrayal of Jeannette, a woman who’s a little too enthralled by her passions and progressivism. As Dinah, Williams manages to convey just where she parts company with her husband’s judgmental ways -- she’s a mouse who can roar when the situation calls for it.

The men bring a wealth of charisma to roles that can sorely use their supple charm. Bakula turns Bill into not a cardboard conservative zealot but a father who has had to deep-freeze his feelings as a way of coping with the horror that befell his daughter. And Boutsikaris lends a touching quiet gentleness to professorial Neil as he gazes upon the world from the vantage of his last days.

It’s in those moments when characters are doing little more than intimately whispering to each other that “The Quality of Life” reveals a great deal about what matters most to us. Free of melodramatic demands, these vastly different couples are able to temporarily soothe the ache of their similar fears and longings.

charles.mcnulty@latimes.com

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‘The Quality of Life’

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

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Fridays, 3:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Nov. 18

Price: $69 and $74

Contact: (310) 208-5454

Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes