STAGE REVIEW : Henley’s ‘Abundance’ Goes West With a New-Found Maturity

There is irony in the title “Abundance,� Beth Henley’s new play that opened over the weekend at South Coast Repertory--a good sign. There is also humor, surprise and anguish, which, in descending order, are more predictable stamps of Henley’s work. But what “Abundance� offers in greatest abundance is a new maturity. This new piece is Henley’s most sober-sided play.

Gone is the kookiness of the three sisters in “Crimes of the Heart� or the riotous Southern Gothic caricatures of “The Miss Firecracker Contest.� “Abundance� is also Henley’s most undisguised play, examining life’s promises and shattered dreams among 4 1/2 people: Two mail-order brides, their respective husbands and a half-character, “Professor� Elmore Crome, who exploits some of the events in their story, pivotally altering its course.

We’re in the latter half of the 19th Century in the Wyoming Territory. Macon Hill (Belita Moreno) and Bess Johnson (O-Lan Jones) have traveled West, practicing all the distance how to say “I do� to men they’ve never seen, who sent them partial fare, and whom they’re willing to marry--until they catch sight of them, or of their closest approximation.

In Bess’ case, it’s the closest approximation. The man who’d sent for her has inconsiderately choked and died on a piece of corn bread. She’s wed instead to his reluctant brother Jack (Bruce Wright), a self-centered, trigger-happy roustabout with a talent for failure who’ll try anything once. Macon’s man, Will Curtis (Jimmie Ray Weeks), is steady as they come--a very good, very dull one-eyed widower to whom Macon finds herself instantly unattracted.

Macon’s the daredevil, Bess the wimp. Macon wants to write a novel, “see the elephant,� make something of herself. She even suggests to the struggling Bess that they should run away together, in search of real adventure. But timid (and intimidated) Bess is content to dodge her husband’s bullets and demeaning words, until a severe winter and starvation finds them rescued by the more prosperous Macon and Will.

What happens next goes well beyond the wildest adventure Macon had in mind, except that it happens to Bess. It is the pivot of the story and won’t be repeated here. Let’s say the tables start to turn. Relationships intertwine, people change, enemies become lovers, friends become enemies, life’s blows and blessings turn wildly capricious, transformations occur.

While “Abundance� starts out as the tale of two well-intentioned women’s lives (the play covers a 25-year span up from the 1860s), it covers a good deal more philosophical ground than that. Aside from the changing fortunes of Bess and Macon, there are the changing ones of Will and, to a lesser degree, Jack. Weeks makes Will a surprisingly appealing fellow, unglamorous perhaps, but a man who knows right from wrong, even if he’s a bit clumsy in other areas of his life. Wright is equally on track with the diametrically opposite Jack, a vivid bounder with lots of sex appeal and a dim sense of loyalty--except to himself.

Director Ron Lagomarsino has kept these distinctions and dimensions clear. As with the men, he has seen to it that the women, in a potentially tricky sequence of events, are full-blooded. Bess and Macon make the play’s largest transitions and Jones and Moreno deliver them in full measure. Jones has the more complex trajectory, from the silly, frightened girl stranded on a station platform to the formidable woman she becomes at Elmore Crome’s flattering instigations. (John Walcutt plays Crome with a restraint becoming to this semicharacter that could so easily have been rendered as a cartoon.)

There are minor loopholes in Act II, where mildly improbable events follow one another in lightning-quick succession. A verbal reference to “syphilitic� markings on Macon’s face in the next-to-last scene implies a life course for which we have been given no compass. What exactly Jack’s role has become in Bess’ later life is equally unclear. He obviously has prospered by hanging around her, though why she would tolerate him at that point, let alone reward his betrayals, is perplexing.

Perhaps Henley’s point is precisely that one cannot expect linear logic from life. A final scene of reconciliation between the women would seem to bear that out. It is the play’s most moving moment, if more truncated than one would want. For once, less is just less when it should be more.

These minor bleeps notwithstanding, “Abundance� remains Henley’s most thoughtful and accomplished, if not necessarily most colorful, play to date. Production values at South Coast are appropriately subdued and spare. Adrianne Lobel, Robert Wodjewoski, Paulie Jenkins and Michael Roth did the sets, costumes, lighting and music/sound respectively.

At 655 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa, Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Until May 25. Tickets: $19-$26; (714) 957-4033.