STAGE REVIEW : ‘Morocco’ Meanders to Nowhere

According to the program notes for Allan Havis’ “Morocco,” once upon a time life was simple. Americans knew right from wrong. They took moral positions. Since then, things have become confused. Vietnam taught us that we can lose by defending indefensible moral positions; that war and peace must be fought at the negotiating table; that we can’t selectively meddle--or not--with other countries.

On the domestic front, things have become just as muddled. Morality went down the tubes as fast as you could say “Watergate,” “Iran-Contra” or “inside trading.” And in the ancient battle of the sexes, the devastation is complete. Equality is redolent with neurosis, and who does what to whom has more to do with politics than with sex.

An examination of these developments is what Havis was after in “Morocco,” the minidrama that opened Saturday in the Second Stage at South Coast Repertory. But the 3 1/2-character play (there is a quasi-silent waiter performed by Paul Hidalgo-Durand) aspires to more than it delivers.

The banking-executive wife of an American architect in Morocco is arrested for soliciting. The architect cries foul. He refuses to believe his wife guilty of prostitution. But the Moroccan colonel in charge of the wife’s detention insists the charges are true. He has pictures to prove it.

The spice in this salsa is that the wife is half-Arab and half-Spanish while her architect-husband is a Jew. In a series of one-on-one confrontations (between the colonel and the architect, the architect and his wife, the architect and the colonel) we discover--of course--that things are not what they seem. What we never discover is what they might be. At this juncture “Morocco” owes more to “Rashomon” than it should.

Unlike “Rashomon,” which captivates by the truth of the possibilities it sets up, Havis hasn’t filled in “Morocco’s” blanks. His duologues are repetitive and never come to grips with anything. The rhythms of the play are the same at the end as they were at the beginning. There is no crescendo, no climax, no suggestion of a resolution. Except for a few tame psychological skirmishes, we’ve learned little that is unexpected about the characters involved.

In “One for the Road,” a piece about equally unspecific detention and torture, playwright Harold Pinter creates an atmosphere of bewildering dread in a mere 15 minutes. That kind of punch is totally absent here. Director David Emmes could have done more to provide dramatic tension by stepping up the pace and eliminating at least one, and preferably both intermissions. (They are dictated solely by Michael Devine’s set and are particularly disruptive.) But there’s no escaping the fact that it’s the writing that’s weak.

Actors Mark Schneider (the architect), Joan Stuart-Morris (his wife) and Alexander Zale (the colonel) rarely suggest much more than well-mannered diffidence and indignation. Never passion.

Stuart-Morris is particularly left dangling in a role whose only definition is a vague and dripping sexuality. There are missed connections everywhere to both husband and jailer. Her furtive looks at the waiter in the second act are so fleeting that the implication of a possible interest or liaison are virtually tossed away. Try as he might to avoid it, Schneider’s architect comes out a wimp while Zale’s colonel is written as a stereotype. The occasional Arabic word or phrase feels like an implant--a gratuitousness compounded by mispronunciation.

All in all, “Morocco” neither titillates nor crackles with wit (as did, say, Lee Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods,” another political duologue seen at La Jolla a couple of seasons back). “Morocco” meanders. It doodles. It plods when it should sizzle. It delivers the commonplace even as it reaches for the complex.

At 655 Town Center Road in Costa Mesa, runs Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8:30 p.m., Sundays at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 3. Until Dec. 11. Tickets: $19-$26; (714) 957-4033.