Family Works In “Cocktail Hour,” Emotions Swept Under The Rug Come Rushing Out Under Skillful Direction

“The Cocktail Hour” Through April 8, at Interplayers Ensemble

Through a steady series of A.R. Gurney productions (this is No. 4 in as many years), Spokane audiences have flocked to these stories of the affluent Eastern WASP establishment.

Isn’t this an alien culture to those of us in the egalitarian West?

Hardly.

“The Cocktail Hour” proves any family can be a Gurney family, as long as it has followed the distinctively American tradition of sweeping strong feelings under the tasteful living room rug, or drowning them in dry martinis at 5 p.m. every day. Gurney’s characters are Eastern and WASP, but their problems are just plain mid-20th century American.

In “The Cocktail Hour,” Interplayers delivers exactly what we have come to expect from Gurney: literate, intelligent humor, surrounded by uncomfortable truths.

Some people might find this play less compelling than other Gurney plays, since it is about a problem that only a writer need face: whether to expose the dark side of one’s family in public. But I found it to be a thoroughly fascinating look at a complicated moral and artistic dilemma.

The plot can be summed up as follows: John, the playwright son, comes home to get permission to produce a darkly autobiographical play. The father angrily forbids it. Everybody argues about it for the next two hours.

It could be called “plotless,” as Gurney calls John’s plays. But under the skilled direction of Michael Weaver, the intellectual twists and turns are dizzying.

This production is propelled by some fine performances, led by William Westenberg as the playwright son. His performance travels a long way in the space of two hours - from forced pleasantness, to silent martyrdom, to morose resentment and, finally, to a kind of newfound acceptance. Westenberg covers this ground with skill and subtlety.

Robert A. Welch dominates the stage and the family as the family’s patriarch, Bradley. Welch brings out the Lear-like tendencies of Bradley, who, on one hand, wants to remain the lion king of the family, but on the other hand, wallows in self-pity about his ungrateful children. All he asks for is some peace in his final days, he bellows.

Joan Welch, the other half of the Interplayers founding team, is also impressive as the conciliatory mother, Ann. While her dramatic pauses can sometimes be off-putting, they can also be uncommonly effective, as in the scene in which she finally agrees to tell her son the plot of a book she wrote when young. The plot is melodramatic, to be sure (governess falls in love with handsome groom), but Welch’s voice invests it with depths of feeling and of significance.

Christina Lang, who plays the sister Nina, is a marvelous actress, but she doesn’t seem to be perfectly cast in this part. On one hand, this character is dangerously low in self-confidence. On the other hand, Lang can’t help but exude self-confidence. I had trouble believing a scene in which Nina runs tearfully into mommy’s arms when John says something hurtful. This Nina had too much swagger to actually do that.

“The Cocktail Hour” is far from the urbane, glamorous kind of play Ann and Bradley loudly mourn. They want the Lunts back. But it’s exactly the kind of thoughtful, literate play that Interplayers, thankfully, specializes in.

MEMO: This sidebar ran with story: HIGHLIGHT A highly charged scene in which Ann recounts the plot of her long-forgotten novel.