STAGE REVIEWS : A Pleasant ‘Time of Your Life’ : The OCC Production Captures the Gentle Comedy but Misses the Grit of Saroyan’s Play

A colorful and authentic-looking jukebox is playing popular tunes from 1939 as the audience enters the Drama Lab Theatre at Orange Coast College for “The Time of Your Life.” The production, like the jukebox, lights up in most of the right places, capturing much of the gentle comedy, though little of the despair, of William Saroyan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

The scene is Nick’s Pacific Street Saloon, Restaurant and Entertainment Palace, a waterfront establishment that is, in the words of its proprietor, “the lousiest dive in Frisco.” Re-created modestly but lovingly by set designer Rick Golson, Nick’s is host to one of the richest samplings of dispossessed humanity ever to inhabit a stage, a bygone world where longshoremen, cops, whores, drunks, dreamers, dancers and lovers of every variety congregate. Sitting in the center of this eddy of human flotsam and jetsam is Joe, wise and mysterious, a man in middle life with a bottomless glass of champagne, a bottomless purse, and a bottomless compassion for the struggling souls who drift in and out of Nick’s.

The story revolves around Joe and his idolizing young sidekick, Tom, who falls in love with the innocent but tarnished prostitute, Kitty. But the meat of the play is not the plot; it’s the wealth of characters--27 in all, and each with a tale to tell.

Director Alex Golson manages to keep the many intertwining stories in focus, and has assembled a remarkably even company of actors who bring the requisite ingenuousness and great commitment to the material.

As Joe, Bryan Burnes has an electric smile and an easy presence, although he swims through a bathtub of champagne without so much as wetting his feet. David Scaglione plays the long-suffering Nick with benign bluster, and as Tom, Scott Parks is wonderfully naive, a trusting child of a man.

Randy Cambell makes a fine and funny Kit Carson, full of pride and tall tales. Peter Marshall is delightfully wistful as the lovelorn Dudley, and Aaron Paholski captures Harry the hoofer’s chutzpah, if not his desperation.

The ladies fare less well in their interpretations, although they certainly look the parts in Dawna Oak’s evocative costumes.

The production misses the gritty world-weariness of Saroyan’s waterfront, still reeling from the economic fist of the Great Depression and overshadowed by the advancing specter of World War II. Some of the more poetic speeches float off without effect, like balloons without ballast, and in the second act, when the darker side of the story floods the action, the whole production threatens to go under.

Yet, even where the actors only scratch the surface of their characters, the writing is rich with innuendo and specific portraiture, still surprisingly relevant in our brave new world of postwar recession, homelessness and moral uncertainty.

‘THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE’

An Orange Coast College theater department presentation of William Saroyan’s play. Directed by Alex Golson. With Bryan Burnes, Scott Parks, Athena M. Rees, David Scaglione, Weston Taussig-Roche, Michael Hebler, Mark Coyan, Peter Marshall, Aaron Paholski, Henry Troung, Kathy Kaefer, Anthony Ramerez, Damon Hill, Suzanne Green, Bill Meadows, Peter Roche, Randy Cambell, Lisa Deluccio, Thom Bruno, Hilary Gale, Monique Grandy, Donna Holsapple, Debi Ham, Karl Person, Harriet Whitmyer, David Henshaw, and Richard Schossow. Set design by Rick Golson. Lighting design by Lonnie Alcaraz. Costume design by Dawna Oak. Performances Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets: $5 to $7, $1 discount for for OCC students, children 12 and under and seniors. (714) 432-5880.