On Theater:

Were one to take in a production of “Jake’s Women” at the Costa Mesa Playhouse without knowledge of its authorship, it would be difficult to guess that the play came from the fertile brain of the prolific Neil Simon.

Simon has convulsed audiences from “The Odd Couple” to “Rumors” with a plethora of stops in between, but in “Jake’s Women,” written in 1992, the playwright turned his focus inward, more so even than in his “Chapter Two.” Expect a few chuckles but few, if any, belly laughs.

Jake, the playwright’s thinly disguised autobiographical figure, is a novelist with an extreme case of writer’s block. He’s constantly visited by the major female figures in his life — who are in his imagination, for the most part. He desperately wants to hang on to his marriage, but can truly express himself only in his writings.

What we have here, as Strother Martin once famously put it, is a failure to communicate. Jake is insecure, controlling and suffers a commitment phobia that may prove his undoing.

The play may have been cathartic to Simon, but it’s hardly what one expects from America’s most successful comedic playwright.

At the Costa Mesa Playhouse, director Michael Dale Brown has mounted a faithful production of “Jake’s Women” with a thoroughly capable cast, headed by John Sturgeon in the title role. Sturgeon takes on the extremely difficult assignment of presenting a figure in torment, much of it in one-on-one communication with the audience, and selling it with professional polish as he interacts with the various females in his life — most of whom are conjured by his fertile imagination.

Jake’s most pressing problem is his wife, Maggie (Leslie Ivarson), who still loves him but is on the verge of walking away because of the “2-inch gap” between them. Ivarson enriches her role with a strong natural appeal, rendering her character the most realistic of the lot.

As Jake’s first wife, Julie, who had been killed in an auto accident, Camille Lacey gives a heart-tugging account of a tragic character. Her scene reuniting her with her now-grown daughter, Molly (a fine, sincere Lorelai Hibbard), is a highlight of the show and Simon’s most sensitive crafting.

In sharp comic contrast are Kay Richey as Jake’s loyal but sarcastic sister Karen, dressed (in the writer’s imagination) almost clownishly and wielding a barbed tongue, and Cleta Cohen as Edith, Jake’s psychiatrist who, ironically, tends to drive him crazy.

Completing the circle are Taylor Rich, cutely “aging down” as the 12-year-old version of Molly, and Rene Bordelon, eye-catching indeed as Jake’s gorgeous but vacuous current companion, caustically referred to by Karen as “that Sheila woman.”

While “Jake’s Women” may be a trifle long (the last scene seems interminable) and more than a bit talky, it’s still a Neil Simon treatise that’s seldom produced locally and it merits attention.

If You Go

What: “Jake’s Women”

Where: Costa Mesa Playhouse, 611 Hamilton St., Costa Mesa

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 28

Cost: $16 to $18

Call: (949) 650-5269

TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews appear Fridays.