‘Man from Nebraska’ in town

Conflict, the essence of drama, comes in myriad forms. Perhaps the most difficult to express onstage is inner conflict ? one character wrestling philosophically with himself.

It is this sort of turmoil around which Tracy Letts’ “Man from Nebraska” is constructed. Its title personage suddenly has lost the faith that has guided him through a most ordinary Midwestern existence, and this yawning gap in his psyche propels him on a strange odyssey that is as confusing to him as it is to those around him.

South Coast Repertory, in the West Coast premiere of Letts’ quietly compelling play, thrusts this conflicted figure center stage in a brilliantly involving production. Its episodic format is cinematic in nature, so it is fortunate that the theater has recruited one of Hollywood’s notable directors to bring the story to the stage.

William Friedkin, best known for directing “The Exorcist” and”The French Connection,” has left the shrieks and gunshots behind for an intensely personal drama. Friedkin patiently builds his production detail by minuscule detail, amplifying the play’s peripheral characters through their interaction with the central figure.

Ken Carpenter ? superbly enacted by Brian Kerwin ? is a rock-solid Nebraskan with a loving wife, two grown daughters and a stable business. Yet something is missing in his life, which Carpenter discovers during a shattering midnight epiphany: He professes to have lost his faith in God, a decided disadvantage for someone in his circumstances.

What, then, to do? On the advice of his young pastor (Ben Livingston), he flies to London, hopefully to reconnect with a city and lifestyle he experienced 40 years before while in the Air Force, leaving a bewildered wife (Kathy Baker) and daughter (Susannah Schulman, the only one of the pair we see) behind.

Kerwin grapples masterfully with his confusion and compulsion, striving to maintain his Puritan values while being seduced by a lusty divorcee (a sensual Laura Niemi) and wooed by the English capital’s bohemian lifestyle. It is a hotel bartender, Susan Dalian, who most successfully penetrates the visitor’s reserve, abetted by a nasty-tempered Brit (Julian Stone) who proves to be not such a bad sort after all. For no apparent reason, Ken elects to take up sculpting under Stone’s tutelage, with the comely Dalian as his model.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, as it were, Baker continues to cling to the weakening strands of her marriage, while daughter Schulman rails virulently against her absent father. If the play contains a major flaw, it’s the failure to firmly establish the dimension of these two characters as dramatic counterweights.

Other home-front distractions abound. Baker’s Nancy is saddled with responsibility for her husband’s aging and infirm mother (Jane A. Johnston), which leads to the play’s most terrifying moment, a bizarre but successful attempt to bring her errant husband back home.

Letts and Friedkin have worked together in the past, at Chicago’s Steppenwolf company, and this bond is evident in SCR’s production of “Man from Nebraska.”

This is a quietly enriching exercise that poses a unique conundrum, yet satisfies in its own way by not completely answering it.