Shining City

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Hicks Street Productions at the Hudson Guild Theatre
Through August 26

Irish playwright Colin McPherson explores the dark hollows of the human psyche in this penetrating drama. A sad, intensely human story, the play speaks knowingly to the guilt, regret and unfulfilled desires that dwell within many of us. Regrettably, the current production at the Hudson Guild Theatre is a miss — an explicit example (despite a skilled pivotal performance) of the pitfalls of do-it-yourself direction, in this case by two members of the four-person ensemble, Brian Foyster and Eddie Kehler.

Foyster plays Ian, a former priest who’s left the Church and has only just set up shop as a psychologist. Into his office stumbles a discombobulated John (Kehler), a widower whose wife recently died in an automobile accident and whose ghost now manifests in the house they shared. Guilty and haunted, John candidly reveals that he and his dead spouse had long ago ceased to be intimate, that they had cohabited without really communicating. Still, she’d been very much part of his life, and he’s seemingly burdened by her loss.

Ian, a nervous taciturn man, does his best to be supportive. He’s something of a cypher until, in an ensuing scene, he’s confronted by Neasa (Charlotte Gulezian) the mother of his baby girl, and his own anxieties and conflicts emerge. The gist of their urgent tumultuous exchange is his decision to leave her, while she, caught off guard, is desperate for him to change his mind. Later, John reappears, along with a fourth character, Laurence (Sean Matic), and the story becomes intriguingly more tangled and complex.

Shining City is one of those plays with dialogue so vivid that its characters fairly leap from the page, even without the benefit of good actors or a thoughtful director. McPherson’s descriptive passages — a mere few words are all he needs — can conjure a wealth of percipience. So it’s especially disappointing when the dramatization of his work is a damper on the material rather than an illumination of it.

Kehler delivers a lively, lucid, well-grounded performance — but he’s constrained by the static staging, some of it brought about by designer Joel Daavid’s impractically realistic set — too much furniture crammed on the small proscenium, leaving the actors little space to move about. Throughout his long monologues Kehler mostly stays seated; when he does stand, though, there’s no place for him to go. Meanwhile, Foyster’s Ian appears impassive; he too remains fixed in his chair. (And, from where I was sitting, I — and other audience members, I presume — could view only his profile.)

Moreover, an insightful third eye might have helped underscore the ironies implicit in John’s narrative that now go under-explored. And she or he might have corrected the directorial missteps visible in the encounter between Ian and Neasa – a potentially passionate, complicated pas de deux that comes across as a merely screechy.

Hudson Guild Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through August 26. https://www.plays411.com/shiningcity or (323) 960-7780. Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.