Theatre in Review: Lost Girls (MCC Theater/Lucille Lortel Theatre)

	Piper Perabo, Tasha Lawrence. Photo: Joan Marcus

I don't want to complain, but today's playwrights aren't making it easy for reviewers. Some of the current crop have embraced storytelling with a vengeance, packing their dramas with so many plot twists and brazen fakeouts that it was practically impossible to talk about them. This was especially true of two works earlier in the season -- Gloria and Barbecue -- each of which established a situation and then, using shock tactics to disorient the audience, went spinning in another direction altogether. Something of the same applies to Lost Girls, in which the playwright, John Pollono, manages to run rings around the family drama formula, with results that are both touching and loaded with suspense.

Here's what I can tell you: The action begins on a wintry morning in Manchester, New Hampshire, as the worst nor'easter of the year is about to dump two feet of snow. The thirtysomething Maggie rushes out the door, running late for her job at an outlet store in a nearby mall. A minute later, she rushes back in, furious: Her car has been stolen. Rousing her mother, Linda -- a woman for whom the morning is the middle of the night -- in a vain attempt at scaring up some emotional support, Maggie alerts the local police -- and is less than thrilled when her ex-husband, Lou, a state trooper, shows up, having intercepted the call. Even more awkwardly, Lou is accompanied by his new wife, Penny. (They were on their way to a medical appointment nearby.) Because Maggie obviously can't pick up Erica, her daughter, she places a call to the local high school -- and learns that Erica didn't show up for school.

Next, Pollono shifts the action to a motel in Connecticut, where a teenage girl and her young male friend enter a motel room; the girl has taken it on the lam from home, and the boy, who obviously adores her, has agreed to drive her to Florida, where she plans to hook up with her much-older boyfriend. The boy nervously admits that his mother, who has an extensive gun collection, is probably going to take aim at his genitalia. The girl is remarkably unsympathetic; all she wants is to get the hell out of the house. Almost instantly, they get in trouble with a drunk at a local bar who comes noisily after them.

And that's all I can tell you, except to add that Pollono nimbly leaps between the two halves of his narrative, confidently manipulating our expectations even as he doles out a series of revelations that, in all likelihood, you won't see coming. Hint: The use of the plural in the title indicates that there is more than one lost girl to be found on stage -- and, as it happens, there is more than one way of being lost. It's also worth noting that Lost Girls isn't quite as elegantly plotted as Small Engine Repair, Pollono's last work, and it arrives at a climax that is surprisingly sentimental, given his characters' scathing way with a line. Still, it's fun to puzzle out the relationship between the two sets of characters, even as Erica's fate comes to seem ever more perilous and one's worries for the boy and girl grow exponentially. And, aided by Jo Bonney's excellent handling of a skilled cast, the stage is filled with recognizable people, especially if you ever spent much time in New England.

Piper Perabo is Maggie -- a divorcee and single parent who also rides herd on her irresponsible mother while trying to stretch each paycheck far enough to keep them all together in a house that she can't really afford -- and she is as tough as those circumstances demand, spouting obscenities and cutting remarks at anyone who gets in her way. She practically takes the paint off the walls while detailing her former marriage's lowest point, when Lou's drunkenness put Erica in harm's way. Inside, however, is a softer, more thoughtful sensibility, which is revealed when she at last turns to another person for a moment's comfort. This is the best performance yet from this fine actress. She is well matched with Tasha Lawrence as Linda -- they could pass for mother and daughter -- who has her own special verbal takedown technique, delivered in a voice honed by years of cigarettes and whisky into something that resembles a buzz saw cutting through knotty pine. She is especially effective at dropping into slack-jawed horror at the news that the only thing to drink in the house is chardonnay, news that causes her to immediately organize a search party to trudge through the snow in search of something brown. The script explicitly states that Maggie and Linda are part of a multigenerational cycle of young women running wild, only to find themselves trapped in an early pregnancy. Hopes are high that Erica will break the cycle -- if she can be found.

Also, Ebon Moss-Bachrach makes Lou into a decent, stand-up guy without erasing the memory of his past misdeeds; his finest moment comes when, fed up with Maggie's version of events, he finally explains what drove him to that epic bender. Providing fine comic contrast is Meghann Fahy, whose touchy-feely Christianity drives Maggie and Linda up the wall. (They are forever fleeing one of her embraces. And, upon learning that Penny was a virgin until her wedding night, Linda screeches, "It's like meeting a unicorn!") Lizzy DeClement is convincingly reckless as the girl, and a little bit cruel, too, when explaining to the boy that the vast age spread between him and his sister is proof positive that he was unwanted. Josh Green is touchingly vulnerable as the boy; he also preens charmingly when things start to go his way in the romance department.

If Richard Hoover's set, which uses a turntable to represent both Maggie's living room and the motel where the boy and the girl are holed up, doesn't quite do justice to either location, Lap Chi Chu's lighting effectively represents several time-of-day looks, especially a candlelight wash after the electricity has gone out in Maggie's house, which sets the scene for the play's climax. Theresa Squire's costumes are pretty near ideal for each character. Daniel Kluger's sound design includes sirens and radio broadcasts, combined with his fine original music.

You could say that Lost Girls is a minor work, a study of some marginal characters caught in a moment of extremis, their story manipulated a bit by a playwright who loves to spin a yarn. But the people seem real, their dialogue is as salty as the Atlantic Ocean, and my guess is you'll hang on every word, waiting to find out what happens. For the sheer pleasure of storytelling, Lost Girls is a fine place to get lost for an hour and a half. -- David Barbour