Theatre in Review: An Early History of Fire (The New Group at Theatre Row)

David Rabe has been absent from the theatre recently, devoting his time instead to writing novels. Possibly as a result of this experience, his new play, An Early History of Fire, has a digressive quality, a willingness to explore potential blind alleys, that proves to be antithetical to drama. The subject matter -- the story of a sensitive young man living in a smallish Midwestern town, who comes to realize he has outgrown the life he planned for himself -- is the basis of many a bildungsroman. It might have worked better in prose. Despite a clear attempt at providing a dramatic focus -- it unfolds in location over a 24-hour time frame -- it never coalesces into anything dramatically satisfying.

Danny, Rabe's protagonist, is a college dropout in his 20s, living with his widowed father and working a blue collar job. It is 1962, and, although he doesn't know it, the world is about to be turned upside down. In the meantime, however, he feels stuck at home, stuck at work, and stuck in a life without any discernible aim. "The older I get, the harder it is not to feel like everything I do is somebody else's idea," he says.

Danny is especially fed up with his father, Emile, a refugee from Nazi Germany who prefers sipping schnapps and playing chess to seeking a job. He is getting bored with his old friends Jake and Terry, working stiffs like him who spend their nights downing cases of beer and talking about getting laid. ("I couldn't count how many times I seen him beat his fists bloody on some wall," notes Terry of Danny -- not that we see anything like that.) Danny's one sort-of rebellious act is to date Karen, a rich girl who attends college in the East. Karen is Rabe's most striking character -- a creature constructed entirely of nerve endings, a pseudosophisticate with a messed-up family, a taste for pot, and a fanatical devotion to the works of J.D. Salinger. To Danny, she is an object of fascination, a way of channeling desires -- for change, for achievement, for a different way of life -- that he can't quite name for himself Karen also acts as a kind of early-warning system for social tremors that will soon shake the country. Or, as she says, "The fifties are hanging onto us and they're warped. They won't let go. That's what I think. It's 1962 and everything is still inside out. There's a better time coming. The fifties are a nightmare from which we have to, we have to WAKE UP."

The action of the play takes place on the day that Danny is to meet Karen's parents, an event that is doomed to go badly from the moment that Emile fails to pick up his son's suit from the dry cleaner. It follows the course of a long, boozy night in which Danny opens up to Karen, a get-together with his friends turns sour, and a wild brush fire is set in the neighboring hills. The main event, however, is Danny's date with Karen, which shows him straying far outside of his comfort zone. She compares their relationship to Lady Chatterly's Lover, then worries out loud that Danny is not an "earth force," adding that she is looking for someone with "a strong back and a weak mind." Somehow Danny never senses that he's being patronized; in any case, Rabe lets the scene go on too long, allowing the statements of alienation to repeat to the point of absurdity. "I mean, I'm in the middle of nowhere," Danny says. "We're all in the middle of nowhere, somewhere, Danny," Karen replies.

More than once it looks like An Early History of Fire will erupt into real drama, but each time it fizzles into more aimless conversation. It might help if Rabe more vividly portrayed the forces that are boxing Danny in. Emile is a fuzzy character who remains largely on the sidelines. The death of Danny's mother (and Emile's wife) is a source of mutual guilt -- but not enough is made of it. Danny says he wants Karen to finance a jazz club, but the idea is quickly dropped. Aside from an unsettling moment when Jake vents his class-conscious rage at Karen, he and Terry are so wanly drawn that Danny's connection to them doesn't seem very real. (There's a subplot about a planned "rumble" against a gang of unruly teenagers that also goes nowhere.)

Rabe's primary interest appears to be in isolating that last possible moment before the 1960s really exploded, which, admittedly, leads to some telling moments of dramatic irony. Danny wonders, "What's Elvis going to die from, do you think?" This infuriates Jake, who sees the singer as an immortal. ("James Dean died," adds Danny, not unreasonably, a comment that does nothing to calm the waters.) "There's a war coming in Indo -- Indo-something -- China," notes Karen, a remark that casts a pall, as it is clear that Danny, Jake, and Terry are exactly the kind of young men destined to be casualties of war.

Jo Bonney's direction is filled with bits of business that help to flesh out the relationships; she's particularly good at showing how Emile unknowingly gets on Danny's nerves. Theo Stockman is remarkably fine as Danny, considering that his character is all inchoate yearnings and petty frustrations. Especially as dressed by Theresa Squire, Claire van der Boom's Karen is strongly reminiscent of the highly strung young women once played by the likes of Yvette Mimieux and Carol Lynley -- actresses that Danny and Karen could see at their local cinema in 1962. Also, Neil Patel's clever setting presents Danny and Emile's living room and kitchen backed by a series of A-frame houses and the hills beyond the town. Lap Chi Chu's lighting and Ken Travis' sound design are both solid.

But An Early History of Fire comes across as an unfocused and unremarkable evening of talk. Very possibly, there's a book inside the script, waiting to get out, which would allow Rabe the space to really delineate the shifts in consciousness that are driving Danny away from everything he knows. As it is, this Fire is conspicuously lacking in dramatic heat.--David Barbour