Theatre in Review: The Wayside Motor Inn (Signature Theatre)If you've ever spent a lonely night in the cookie-cutter confines of a chain motel, you're bound to experience the shock of recognition at The Wayside Motor Inn. For the first entry of its A. R. Gurney retrospective, Signature Theatre Company is presenting one of his earliest, and most distinctively different, works. Neither an urbane comedy of WASP manners nor a broadside against political conservatives -- Gurney's two specialties -- it is a melancholy, and structurally tricky, collection of short stories, all of which unfold simultaneously in the same space. Taking his cue from Tales of a Wayside Inn, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's collection of narrative poems, Gurney has imagined a motel, located on the outskirts of Boston, with a clientele of weary travelers afflicted with the American disease of rootlessness. They inhabit rooms on several floors but, in an act of compression, five separate mini-dramas inhabit a single room -- a masterpiece of anonymous bad taste in Andrew Lieberman's photo-realistic set design. Ray (Quincy Dunn-Baker), a traveling salesman, waits for his phone-computer hookup (the time is the late '70s), argues with his wife on the phone, and tries to make time with Sharon (Jenn Lyson), the ex-hippie waitress with whom he once had a fateful near-encounter. Frank (Jon DeVries) and Jessie (Lizbeth MacKay) are older spouses on a visit to see their new grandchild; a heart attack has left Frank irritable and depressed and Jessie feeling ignored and irrelevant. Vince (Mark Kudisch) is a middle-aged Jewish businessman eager to work his contacts to get his son, Mark (Will Pullen), into Harvard -- whether the boy wants it or not. (Preparing him for a college interview, Vince hands him a brightly colored Oxford cloth shirt. "I hate pink," Mark protests. "It's what they wear," his father replies, packing a world of meaning into that seemingly bland statement.) Phil ( David McElwee), a college boy, brings Sally (Ismenia Mendes), his girlfriend, for a night of sex uninterrupted by roommates and other distractions, but Sally isn't sure is she is ready. Andy (Kelly AuCoin) and Ruth (Rebecca Henderson) are soon-to-be exes, struggling to hold onto their civility as they work out a property-sharing deal. Not all of these story lines are created equal. The Phil-Sally plot is a fairly inconsequential bit of sex comedy and the Ray-Sharon scenes, in which she horrifies him with the details of all the unwanted additives in the food she serves, sounds like Gurney trying to make like Neil Simon and not quite succeeding. (The comedy of seduction has never been the author's forte.) But thanks to the constant cross-cutting between situations, none of them is allowed to drag -- and, taken together, they make a surprisingly vivid mural of lost souls seeking out solid ground -- in family, romance, sex, or the promise of social mobility. Frank, whose grouchy manner conceals a constant state of anxiety about his health, says it best: Making a series of fruitless calls for a doctor, he mutters, "I just want someone to listen to my heart." He could be speaking for anyone in The Wayside Motor Inn. Under the canny direction of Lila Neugebauer, all five stories unfold naturally and gracefully, without any on-stage traffic jams. Indeed, in juxtaposition, they seem to comment on each other; the sight of Phil and Sally in a tentative embrace; Andy and Ruth slumped on the floor, dejected, following a near-violent set-to; and Frank worriedly checking his vital signs all combine to make a vivid impression of life's impermanence, the real trouble affecting the clientele at the Wayside Motor Inn. Neugebauer also elicits a gallery of fine performances: MacKay is especially touching as Jessie, for whom retirement has been a series of losses -- of her home, her children, her sense of purpose -- and who now feels her marriage slipping through her fingers. Frustrated by Frank's latest attempt at pushing her away, she stalks out, snapping, "At least I can hold the baby." Kudisch is quietly hair-raising as Vince, especially in a remarkable speech in which he explains to Mark that it is his duty to grow up, leave his parents behind, and be embarrassed by them. A later, gloves-off father-and-son confrontation is even more powerful. As Andy and Ruth, AuCoin and Henderson reveal oceans of submerged hurt in their exchanges, especially in a tussle over family photos that spins out of control. Lyon is an appealingly tart-tongued presence as Sharon, who informs Ray that "we are in the last stages of the capitalist system," surely the last words he expects to hear from the sexy waitress he is trying to pick up. The others are all spot-on. As mentioned, Lieberman's hotel room set is stunningly accurate, down to the green plaid wallpaper and orange chenille bedspreads. If you're an American over the age of 40, you've stayed there. The set contains a full ceiling, which must have challenged Tyler Micoleau, the lighting designer, but he responds with a series of time-of-day looks that deepen the feeling of sadness hanging in the air. Kaye Voyce's costumes -- a three-piece suit for Dunn-Baker; a gray, pin-striped suit with matching turtleneck for Kudisch; an ankle-length peasant skirt and boots for Henderson -- are period perfect, down to the last detail. Stowe Nelson's solid sound design covers a variety of effects. Don't attend The Wayside Motor Inn expecting Gurney's typically wry social commentary. This is a sadder, more ruminative piece. (One story ends happily, more or less, but it serves only to highlight the darkness elsewhere.) Like most of Gurney's characters, these motel-dwellers are lost in a world where the certainties have quietly slipped away. This time out, however, they don't have the comforts of fine homes or extended cocktail hours. They're trapped in a tacky, sanitized purgatory, with no obvious way out.--David Barbour 
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