Local color

New Englandish sports a wry eye

by Bill Rodriguez

By Bill Lattanzi. Directed by Vera Wayne. At NewGate Theatre through October 11.

A smorgasbord of short plays by Bill Lattanzi is opening the season at NewGate Theatre, and they are indeed four varied offerings. Ranging from brief confections to an entrée-length repast, you wouldn't think they came out the same kitchen.

The one with most substance comes after the intermission. The Birth Announcement has a bit of wonder to it, along with urbane relationship humor. Kat (Clare Blackmur) is dreamily musing aloud about the fetus growing inside her, a "tiny blue porpoise" swimming toward becoming her little girl. Meanwhile, Callie (Brien Lang) is at Tiffany's, poring over upscale birth announcements. As the clerk, Zipporah, Anna DiStefano strikes a crucial balance between seductiveness and dignity, precipitating a moral crisis in Callie.

He is at the posh jewelers in search of "something of value, something you can hold onto," and is disturbed when his erotic attraction to "that zipper woman," as Kat refers to her, invades his dreamlife. As Callie puts it, he wants to find some "deep identity thing" to match the "woman thing" of Kat's pregnancy. More effectively than elsewhere, Lattanzi reveals rather than asserts the character of his character, which is as superficial as a silver plate that only looks solid.

Similar in attempt -- wrestling with a moral dilemma -- is the longest piece, New Englandish, which opens the evening. Events flow and eddy around Jack (Bruce Newbury), an elderly former Maine-iac who refuses to leave his de-rent-controlled apartment in a gentrifying Boston. He hasn't paid rent for eight months and the only reason he's not already on the street is that Bob (Lang), the young owner of the building, has known the amiable guy since he was a tyke. Compounding the strain on ethical rectitude are the two yuppies who take the place -- lawyers, but female lawyers (which in 1997 is still like being an idealistic raw recruit instead of a baby-killer).Terry (Kerrie Kitto) is a steely prosecutor and Sara Jane (Clare Blackmur) is a softie defense lawyer, although those roles don't prompt corresponding knee-jerk reactions.

Under the direction of Vera Wayne, who helms the whole evening, there are some good touches and choice lines, such as when Terry, who is black, says that Fenway Park looks "like a bowl of Minute Rice." (Hey, I'm easy.) When the women are considering renting the space, the deciding moment is clever; when they kiss, Terry's gaze is locked on Jack, who continues to beam with dollar signs in his eyes. Newbury refuses to make the demented Jack pathetic, and his spurning of easy audience empathy is typical of the capable choices by this acting quartet. The half-hour play itself is weaker, with a conclusion that trails off so arbitrarily and feebly that the opening-night audience didn't know to applaud. Before that point, when motivations were clear the actions often wandered -- except for on-the-beam Jack -- and sometimes when actions were decisive they came out of left field. The threat and chilling effect of urban violence is brought up now and then in the title piece. But that never acquires much purpose besides being an obvious red flag for alienation.

The other two pieces are flat-out comic. France is a surreal romp that is just a skit but is so brief that we don't expect more. The interview of a job applicant (Newbury) turns into weird and rapid-fire Up with People rally of two. The interviewer (Laurent Y. Andruet, impeccably machine-gun-tongued) whips him to Francophile fervor by spouting French catch phrases and Gallic names like a fountain of verbal perfume. Best Man is about a sleazoid Hollywood producer (Newbury) who wants his Boston social worker son (Lang) to be best man at his wedding. The wife-to-be is a porno actress (Kitto), a Brown grad in ancient tongues (nudge-nudge). Once again, there is an ending problem. The story concludes not with a plausible bang but with a contrived whimper.

If there is an underlying sensibility that comes through these four pieces, perhaps it is a wry eye. People's foibles get deftly skewered rather than bludgeoned. Yet Lattanzi, the recent winner of the annual New England Theater Conference Gassner prize, is still growing, if these short pieces are representative. He is past the point of searching for voice and into the more disorienting terrain of his craft -- searching for focus.