THEATER REVIEW: ‘Tranced’ talky but taut

Hypnotism, genocide, chicanery, guarded secrets. All are present in abundance in Bob Clyman’s new drama “Tranced,” now receiving its world premiere at the Laguna Playhouse.

There are all these elements and more in Clyman’s talky but compelling play, rendered even more arresting by the fact that Clyman only moonlights as a playwright “” he’s a practicing psychologist, a vocation he shares with his main character in “Tranced.”

Just what really is the subject of the play? For this information, audiences must prick up their ears and remain riveted until the final curtain, for the focus shifts markedly throughout director Jessica Kubzansky’s strongly presented production.

For openers, psychologist Philip (Thomas Fiscella) is presented with an African graduate student, Azmera (Erica Tazel), who harbors grotesque memories of her experiences in a native village which can be accessed only under hypnosis. And he is one of the preeminent “trancers” in the field. Also profoundly interested, for her own potential career advancement, is Beth (Ashley West Leonard), a journalist who shares her interest with the government’s undersecretary for African affairs, Logan (Andrew Borba).

Against scenic designer Narelle Sissons’ Spartan backdrop of chairs and an all-purpose desk, “Tranced” is played out more as a debating session than a stage production. Yet the performances of at least three cast members raise the bar with a vengeance, bringing the audience to the edge of its collective seat in anticipation.

Fiscella’s depiction of the self-absorbed clinical psychologist is the crown jewel of the production. A workaholic needing neither a love life nor a family, his character generates both the affirmative and negative facets of his personality, accenting the latter with a vengeance. We await his eventual stumble, then are quite amazed when it occurs.

Tazel presents a character all too willing to be “tranced” in order to release pent-up memories of witnessed genocide in order to set her soul at rest. Yet there is a stubborn resistance in her persona, a grasping for control, which Tazel projects beautifully.

The reporter, demanding more than a taped hypnosis session on which to base her big story, is skillfully rendered by Leonard, who applies to Fiscella’s psychologist the pressure placed on her by her editor. She also functions well in the segments with Borba’s bureaucratic functionary.

Only in the latter case does “Tranced” lose a bit of its luster. Borba apparently feels the need to expend as much visceral energy as Fiscella radiates in a less-crucial capacity. This results in a wheel-spinning performance which neutralizes his character’s primacy.

There is suspense on the order of the Alfred Hitchcock movie “Spellbound” in Clyman’s newest work, though it’s cluttered with red herrings regarding African dams and McCarthyesque references to Philip’s past life. With some judicious eviscerating, “Tranced” could well become the thriller it seeks to be.

TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.