THEATER REVIEW ‘TWO ROOMS’ : Hostage Crisis : A PCPA Theaterfest production makes the fear, rage and frustration of terrorists’ captives become unsettlingly tangible.

A poetic brand of psychological and social paleontology has always proved Lee Blessing’s greatest strength as a playwright.

At his best, Blessing unearths a visceral sense of the flesh-and-blood reality behind the abstraction of our daily headlines--eroding comfortable detachment and forcing us to confront the complicity of our own humanity in the most divisive conflicts of our time.

A far cry from “This Week With David Brinkley,” Blessing’s plays frame those abstract issues in personal--and emotionally charged--contexts.

So it’s no surprise that in the PCPA Theaterfest production of “Two Rooms,” the fear, rage and frustration inherent in the nightmare of hostages being held by terrorists become unsettlingly tangible.

The play alternates between two barren stage settings that strip the principal characters to their most elemental and helpless conditions. One setting is the cell in which Michael (Frederic Barbour), a blindfolded professor abducted from the American University of Beirut, holds himself together by recreating his memories and engaging in imaginary dialogues with his wife, Lanie (Teresa Thuman).

On the other side of the world, Lanie has emptied the room Michael used as a home office and has retreated into it, trying to share in as much of his physical reality as she can.

Yet both Michael and Lanie remain victims of impersonal powers that are punishing them simply because they are Americans. Michael’s captors are never seen. Their motives and ambitions remain shrouded in anonymity--the same anonymous, hooded menace that peered at the world from that hotel balcony during the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Exploring the complex facets of those dark politics is a play yet to be written--Blessing’s intent here is to show their consequences for the unknowing victims.

For Michael, the toll is a complete dissociation from reality as he’s always lived it. “Yesterday one of my guards told me I’d been here three years,” he recalls with a bitter laugh. “I didn’t even know what he meant.”

Though physically safe, Lanie also becomes a pawn on a murky chessboard, caught between the agendas of a young reporter (Michael Heelan) out for a story and a calculating State Department representative (Connie Doolan) who maintains, “It’s our job to sacrifice the few for the many.”

Throughout the ordeal of their respective captivities, both Barbour and Thuman conduct themselves with the kind of dignity we’d all aspire to; their characters even manage to find a measure of compassion for their tormentors. And their moments of connection during their imagined encounters are both agonizing and hauntingly beautiful.

But too often the piece is undermined by an earnestness that teeters into simplicity, particularly in the use of the two unreal supporting characters who perch like angel and devil on Lanie’s shoulders. The well-intentioned reporter could boost his credibility with some hard-boiled cynicism, and the officious official only hints at her human side beneath all the red tape.

What’s missing is exactly the kind of complexity that made the arms negotiators in Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods” so human. Here, he’s settled for less subtle scripting.

Milking the obvious polemics in the staging was too great a temptation for director Roger DeLurier. In a hostage drama scenario that carries so much inherent emotional weight, every feeling seems amplified tenfold. The goal of engaging the audience would be better served not with a participation hysterique but with an equilibrium of thought and feeling.

In other words, put the brakes on the steamroller.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“Two Rooms,” performed tonight through April 25 (Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8 p.m.) at the Backstage Theatre in Solvang. Tickets are $16, available through all TicketMaster outlets or call (800) 221-9469 for reservations or further information.