Summoning Up Relaxing ‘Voices’ at Irvine Barclay

There’s something almost comforting about A.R. Gurney’s plays. So civilized and focused, they seem to discourage the world outside from intruding on their sentimental space.

His small universe has rarely strayed from upstate New York, where his reflections on family, society and growing up have led to several popular works, including “Love Letters,” ’The Cocktail Hour” and “The Dining Room.”

No surprise, then, that “Ancestral Voices” is true to that dewy tradition. The 1998 piece settled into the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Saturday night, providing a relaxed entertainment that built on Gurney’s eye as a chronicler and a talented veteran cast under Gordon Hunt’s direction. Much like “Love Letters,” which unfolds through the reading of a series of correspondences, “Ancestral Voices” places the actors onstage, seated with scripts in hand. We depend on them to create atmosphere, and they did that at the Barclay.

The main voice tends to be Eddie, a sweet kid who listens in on all the adult talk swirling around him in Buffalo, commenting on this bit of information, trying to figure out that one. There’s much going on, from hints of World War II starting to the family scandal of Eddie’s grandmother leaving his grandfather for another man.

It’s all a little too much for Eddie, who begins the reading as an 8-year-old. He’s unable to understand this huge change in his life and, worse, frustrated by not knowing how to change it back. Fred Savage (best known for TV’s “The Wonder Years’) sometimes stumbled when projecting Eddie’s childish energy and exasperation, but overall he helped keep the momentum going.

In his quieter way, so did Rene Auberjonois as Ed, the grandfather. Auberjonois (who, like Savage, has performed “Ancestral Voices” several times, including the West Coast premiere last year at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank) didn’t have as many lines as some but made the most of what he had.

He’s the proudest pillar of this wealthy WASPish family, and it’s painful to see him slowly erode as it becomes clear his wife, Madeleine (Katherine Helmond), isn’t returning. With just the clench of his jaw and a hawkish, nearly predatory state, Auberjonois informed us what kind of man Ed was. And when that jaw drooped and the stare became an unsure gaze it was obvious what he’d become.

What’s not obvious is why Madeleine would leave him in the first place. Gurney, usually so careful about developing characters, doesn’t give many reasons for her staying with Roger (also played by Auberjonois). Roger, we’re told, can be a charming ladies’ man who shares Madeleine’s love of horses. OK, what else? While both Roger and Ed seem like demanding men, Ed is the more interesting. Helmond dealt with Madeleine’s vagueness by adding a layer of spacey obliviousness. While not helping clarify, it did add humor.

The edges are sharper with Eddie’s parents, the fretting but strong Jane (Adrienne Barbeau) and Harvey (Lawrence Pressman), one of those self-satisfied types who can’t help being a gasbag. Barbeau was capable in this, the least interesting of the roles, but Pressman shined. When he got on his high horse, you wanted to yell at him to knock it off, just as Eddie did throughout the reading.

Gurney can be frustrating when his romanticizing memories causes us to doubt them. But honest, revealing moments tend to hold sway, as when Eddie described a final meeting between Ed, Madeleine and Roger after several years. Eddie imagined fireworks as old grudges were settled, but what he got was just polite people eager to remain polite. In Gurney’s world, it’s what folk do.

*

“Ancestral Voices,” starring Rene Auberjonois and Fred Savage, will return to Orange County on Jan. 19, 2002, at Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. $22.50 to $2750. (714) 278-3371.