A play that lives by its wit

Theresa Rebeck possesses the gift of gab. Words tumble magnificently from the mouths of her characters, crackling with wit, sparkling with insight and ringing with authenticity.

This facility with language goes a long way toward explaining why her plays “Spike Heels,” “Loose Knit,” “View of the Dome” and many others have found their way onto Southland stages and why another, recent one is being given a zippy production at Laguna Playhouse.

“Bad Dates” is, as the title promises, a chronicle of one woman’s semi-disastrous reentry into the dating scene after flight from a “psychopath” of a husband and life as a single mom. But this story, written for a solo actress, also strives to be something more, as it ponders the myriad differences between women and men and the things they want from life.

That it never quite succeeds on this deeper level is no fault of performer Beth Broderick, who charms and amuses for 90 energetic minutes, without intermission, or of director Judith Ivey, who proves to be as proficient on that side of the stage as she has been as a Tony-winning actor.

Upon entering the theater, audiences find themselves staring into a bedroom in a New York brownstone apartment. Lamps light the windows of other units in Dwight Richard Odle’s two-story scene frame, but one’s eyes are drawn immediately to the most extraordinary feature of the central room: dozens upon dozens of pairs of shoes, arrayed on a multitiered rack, tucked into hanging pockets on closet doors and lined along the walls.

The shoes are not a fetish, protests Broderick’s Haley Walker, as she materializes in the room and begins to chat up the audience. She soon gives up this argument as mere self-delusion, but no matter, because we’re not paying much attention yet. We’re too busy trying to figure out where we’ve seen Broderick before. (The answer, television fans, is: as Aunt Zelda on “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” and as Kate’s mom on “Lost.”)

In the musical twang of her Texas past, Haley speedily fills us in on the details of her life, and it’s an eventful existence, to be sure. Having escaped a dangerous husband in Austin, she landed in New York, in nearly as peril-fraught a situation: as a waitress in a mob-run restaurant. Fortuitously, the bad guys were carted off to jail, and Haley found herself running the restaurant. The place has generated a buzz and business is good.

So Haley has a job she enjoys, a dependable income and “a good kid” for a daughter. What’s missing, she’s come to realize, is a member of the opposite sex with whom to share it all. So she’s dressing for the dating circus again, while trying to blot from her mind the ways in which her life resembles that of Joan Crawford’s epically ill-fated title character in “Mildred Pierce.” Taking short, hobbling steps and emitting little “ow’s” as she tries on a succession of too-tight shoes, Broderick’s Haley cracks up the audience when, near tears, she laments, “Do none of these fit? What kind of cruel universe would do that to me?”

She also pulls off a sort of burlesque act as, in her nervous attempt to put together the right ensemble, she wriggles into one dress while simultaneously slipping out of the one she’s already wearing underneath it.

Vividly, Broderick and Ivey -- with playful assistance from costumer Julie Keen -- craft a heroine who’s a bit of a ditz, with the fashion sense of a floozy, yet above all is smart, capable and simply overflowing with verve.

Too bad, then, that the zingy battle-of-the-sexes scenario got crossed with the police procedurals Rebeck once wrote for TV’s “NYPD Blue.” As events in Haley’s monologue begin to strain credibility, the meaning behind her quest threatens to evaporate into thin air.

She’s a fun date for a while, but it’s not clear her relationship with the audience will lead anywhere.

*

‘Bad Dates’

Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Also 2 p.m. Sept. 29

Ends: Oct. 16

Price: $20 to $59

Contact: (949) 497-ARTS or www.LagunaPlayhouse.com

Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Beth Broderick...Haley Walker

Written by Theresa Rebeck. Directed by Judith Ivey. Set Dwight Richard Odle. Costumes Julie Keen. Lights Paulie Jenkins. Sound David Edwards. Production stage manager Vernon Willet.