STAGE REVIEW : More Than Entertainment Is to Be Found in ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’

With its mind-tweaking sensibility and flamboyant now-you-see-’em-now-you-don’t dramatics, Chapman College’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author” sometimes seems influenced as much by Rod Serling as Luigi Pirandello.

That’s not necessarily bad. Director Michael Nehring has tried to make Pirandello’s arch exploration of the blurry distinction between art and reality accessible, especially for a college-age audience. Any updating of this 1921 classic--about abandoned characters from another play bullishly seeking life in the real world--is bound to tempt directorial playfulness, and Nehring seems to have been inspired by the playfulness of sci-fi.

Along the way, he has brought in a comic eeriness that, in one swoop, emphasizes the imaginative strangeness of “Six Characters” while teasing it at the same time. Then there are the visuals--stark, theatrical lighting, blackouts accompanied by pulsing music and a graphic finale that could fit right into the “Twilight Zone.” (In fact, Serling could very well have used Pirandello as the inspiration for a “Twilight Zone” episode entitled “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.”)

During Wednesday’s opening night at the campus’s Waltmar Theater, the production (which continues through Sunday) did keep the audience tuned in and hooting. Everyone apparently had fun, but did they pick up on Pirandello’s philosophical musings? With this play, entertainment isn’t the only reward.

There is a good chance that enough did click. Even with the colorful, jumbled staging, Nehring manages to project the characters’ dilemma, which becomes a symbol for both the artist’s creative manipulation of reality and the natural confusion over the transitory essence of our own reality. Nehring is reasonably faithful to the text and rarely downplays the importance of the dialogue.

Pirandello’s metaphysical questions are manifested in how a theater troupe deals with the characters when they miraculously barge into a play rehearsal (at the Waltmar, the play is Elmer Rice’s “The Adding Machine,” which becomes an in-joke: Chapman College staged the drama last month). The characters demand an author to finish their story. The no-nonsense director (played with the right casual humor by Margie Leggett) and her actors want them to go away, but these are pushy folk. They are staying.

The troupe’s confusion is mixed with curiosity, and soon the characters--a father, mother and four children--begin revealing their disjointed story, which is both erotic and tragic. Most of it is related by the father (Erik Van Beuzekom) and his stepdaughter (Jennifer Courdy), two combatants who approach the opportunity almost as if they are in a celestial court of law.

Before long, the director becomes intrigued by this hot tale and agrees to stage it. Pirandello then takes this as a departure point to probe the nature of drama and its ability to project reality, but not create it. The characters, upset with the actors’ shallow, dishonest interpretations, demand to play themselves but are refused. The theater, the father concedes, is “a profession of madness.”

Van Beuzekom makes that pronouncement, like several others, with a mixture of authority and sadness. He plays the father correctly, as the drama’s intellectual conscience, but also as something of a blow hard. It’s refreshing to have Courdy around as the taunting stepdaughter: her portrayal is sexy and very funny.

The support is up and down, with amusing portrayals drawn by Bettina Chua and Jamie Clardy as the troupe’s impatient and not-too-accomplished lead actors. But Michael Baker as the son seems self-conscious, and Rochelle Lane as the mother is excessively brittle. Lane is on the right track; she just has to tone it down some.

“SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR”

A Chapman College production of Luigi Pirandello’s drama. Directed by Michael Nehring. With Erik Van Beuzekom, Rochelle Lane, Jennifer Courdy, Michael Baker, F. Joseph DeVries, Stacy Travis, Sam Lipton, Margie Leggett, Bettina Chua, Jamie Clardy, Trey Fernald, Elizabeth Kelley, Elizabeth Ward, Jonathon Klein, Ted Lowe, Roger Mathey, Kelly Katen, Jeffrey Shaw, Bruce Sanders, Giovanna Brokaw and Kristin Westland. Set and lighting by Gerry Griffin. Costumes by Harris Van Cleef. Sound by Ingrid Thronson and Michael Nehring. Plays today and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. in the campus’s Waltmar Theater, near the corner of Grand Street and Palm Avenue, Orange. Tickets: $3 to $5. (714) 997-6812.