Play a Mix of Heady Stuff and Sitcom Fluff

Writer-director Mark McQuown’s “The Keys to the Kingdom” is a new work at war with itself. It is intent on being the very model of the well-made play, but also inclined to mimic sitcoms. It manages to be both brain-tickling and ultimately vaporous.

As difficult a time as “Keys” has in unlocking its real meaning, it’s a courageous project. And it marks the public premiere of the permanent North Hollywood home of Theatre Unlimited, which has turned the formerly funky spaces of Iguana Cafe and Wildlife Theatre into a spacious, actor-friendly place big enough to house designer Marco De Leon’s expansive, detailed suburban-home set.

And from the start, director McQuown appears to have sure control of mood, pace and his cast as we get acquainted with frazzled company man Sandy (Vern Urich), whose problems begin when he can’t find his house keys. Girlfriend Sylvia (Carrie Ann Quinn) is no less harried, frustrated that Sandy isn’t more excited about sex, and unsure where their lives are headed.

Oh, and did we mention that a homeless guy named Otis (Hugh Dane) has moved in upstairs, unbeknownst to Sandy and Sylvia?

In one of the play’s innumerable plot oddities--McQuown almost seems to have a fetish for them--Otis not only manages to get inside, but he sets up house, tidies up after the couple (including turning off the TV, which he loathes) and, predictably, goes about changing their lives.

Too proud to be called a bum, Otis is the latest in the Hollywood tradition of the social castoff as the reclaimer of rich people’s souls.

At the same time, Otis has his own complicated back story (nothing in “Keys” lacks for complication), which involves his own self-redemption. It also involves a messy tangle of barely credible Act II plot turns that bring the play to an unsatisfying halt after an overly long buildup.

For a play so intent on communicating the evils of TV--McQuown suggests that Sandy’s hollowness as a man is almost completely because of TV--it slips into a facile TV sitcom mode for the sake of cleverness or speeding things along.

This shows up most glaringly with Sandy’s housemaid Joanne (Lynndi Scott), who seems written from a sitcom sensibility as she dispenses her sexual and mental therapy far and wide. All of this clashes with the play’s deeper ambitions, which are to examine the ultimate goals of the go-getter yuppie class.

McQuown allows his plotting to overrun his ideas; it’s why “Keys,” for all of its craft, lacks any resounding chords. Instead, we are left thinking about the performances.

And there are some fine ones, led above all by Dane. He is commanding and funny as Otis, strong enough to withstand some of McQuown’s worst lines and resolute enough to suggest Otis’ former and very different life.

Urich begins on a one-note whine as frazzled Sandy, then plumbs the role’s depths with real skill. Quinn comes across as someone smarter and more ambitious than the average office secretary--in a way, she’s too good for the role. But she does find nervous comedy in Sylvia’s sexual frustration.

Scott nails the everyday exhaustion of the housemaid, and slips easily into Joanne’s sitcom-ese.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “The Keys to the Kingdom.”

* WHERE: Theatre Unlimited, 10943 Camarillo St., North Hollywood.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Feb. 9.

* HOW MUCH: $10-$15.

* CALL: (818) 788-9038.