The Petrified Forest

Review by Deborah Klugman

In Robert E. Sherwood’s 1934 play, The Petrified Forest, a world-weary writer, Alan Squier (skillfully etched by John DeMita), happens into a remote café in the Arizona desert, and in the space of a few short hours has stirred the eternal ardor of the café owner’s starry-eyed daughter, Gabby (Leona Britton) – or so she thinks. By the time the play wraps up, Gabby’s passion has been requited with an ultimate sacrifice.

Sidney Carton, move over.

Perhaps Shakespeare or another writer of his caliber might have been able to pull off such a plotline, but Sherwood, later a Pulitzer Prize winner, couldn’t and didn’t; this, his first play, is a very musty melodrama, a romance nested in a hostage scenario, perhaps most notable at this stage of our theater and film culture for having brought Humphrey Bogart to the world’s attention. The play’s themes — “modern” neuroses, circa mid-1930s, and the demise of both American intellectualism and the nation’s pioneering spirit — seem in this day and age to be hopelessly outdated, given our current overexposure to genocide and global warming. Only the most illustrious ensemble could deliver on such a fossilized narrative, and this cast, under Laura James’ otherwise fluid direction, simply cannot.

Sherwood sets the stage with a heated discussion between a working-class customer in the café (Frank Gangarossa), who argues for the bright future of Bolshevik Russia, and Boze (John Druska), an ex-collegiate football player who works at the café’s adjacent service station and whose chief aim in life is getting Gabby into bed. When Boze exits, the argument for and against communism is taken up by Gabby’s Dad, Jason (Joe Nassi), a forerunner of our own Tea Party type super-patriot. Had the narrative pursued Jason, we might have had a resonant work to consider, but instead Act I revolves around the blossoming attraction between Gabby and Squier: He is fascinated by her innocence, and she, by his worldly sophistication. The ante ups when a “bloodthirsty” group of gangsters, led by tough guy Duke Mantee (George Tovar), swarms the café and threatens the patrons at gunpoint. This leads both to a testing-of-the-manhood of all the male non-gangsters present, and to the play’s violent and tear-jerking denouement – defeating even the adept DeMita, who up to this point has salvaged the production with his articulate rendering of an angst-ridden gentleman of breeding.

On the other hand, Britton, too mature to play the 18- to 20-year-old World War I “war” baby the script pointedly calls for, stumbles in trying to evoke Gabby’s wide-eyed naivete. She’s more successful playing fear and anger, and her conversation with Squier includes authentic moments. But other times her ruminations about longing to see the wide world and her coy handling of the persistently horny Boze comes across as stagey, underscoring the creakiness of the script.

Elsewhere, the standard of performance varies: Tovar’s stereotypic gangster sinks in Bogart’s shadow, although his henchmen, especially David Mingrino, create colorful cameos. Jack Kutcher’s lively Grandpa injects some dynamism into some of the drawn-out dialogue, and Jeanine Anderson brings humor to her role of an aging trophy wife, thrilled that something is finally occurring in her life.—Deborah Klugman

Theatre West at 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Hlywd.; Fri.- Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. (no perf Sun., April 20); through April 27. (323) 851-7977, www.theatrewest.org.