Poor acoustics hamper staging of weighty drama `Orphans’

Maine summer theaters have tended to produce shows that are crowd pleasers: comedies, musicals, love stories, and murder mysteries. Cold Comfort is the exception this summer with Lyle Kessler’s American drama, “Orphans,” which plays through Aug. 22 at Emerson Hall in Castine.

A pastiche indebted to Eugene O`Neill, Sam Shepard, and Harold Pinter, “Orphans” is a ferociously emotional and tension-laden contemporary tale about the symbolic and actual loss suffered by three inner-city orphans.

Atmospheric lights go up on Philip, a fearful man-child holed up in a Philadelphia apartment where he blows bubbles, watches TV, and eats tuna sandwiches each day while his brother and caretaker, Treat, goes to work as a petty thief.

Propelled by a wild energy, Philip scales the furniture in the disheveled apartment, but never steps beyond the front door for fear of encountering pollen, which he believes is deadly to his unexposed lungs. Because his brother is not only his keeper, but his intellectual and physical captor, too, Philip must hide an interest in language and reading by stuffing books under a couch pillow and pretending that an Errol Flynn look-alike has broken into the house and underlined words in the newspaper.

Treat hits the sidewalk daily, filling his pockets with jewelry and emptying his tense body of the anger and frustration that marks his hot-tempered personality. He pulls a knife on people who aren’t cooperative or who merely get in his way. And at home, he doles out equal portions of terrorism and tyranny through his verbal profanity and teasing.

Like Peter Pan’s Lost Boys, the brothers have built a life of sorts for themselves, playing an unending (and sometimes cruel) game of tag and eating jars of Hellman’s mayonnaise for lunch.

But when Treat kidnaps the well-heeled Harold, a drunken Chicagoan whose briefcase is filled with stocks and bonds, a new muscle gets flexed in the household. In addition to being a successful “businessman” of questionable means, Harold is an orphan and decides to take these boys under his wing. It’s a Pygmalion plot for this decade and ends with a final tableau of male bonding through the shared pain of being motherless in a violent and frightening world. By piping in smooth jazz tunes and fading the lights slowly on cliff-hanger scenes, director J. Martin Kutney creates both a theatrical and cinematic mood. It’s all very intriguing to watch, but nearly impossible to hear because of the poor acoustics in the auditorium. Sparse though the dialogue is, it is still important as well as interesting and, at times, funny, but because the actors shout well over half of the script, the words get lost in the echoes of the hall.

Nevertheless, Joe Goscinski’s performance as Philip shows the raw physical energy as well as the deeply innocent and discerning nature of the wild boy. Christopher J. Guilmet’s bullying actions and snarling expressions are perfect for Treat, though he is the worst offender of overdoing his lines and speaking into the echo of his own voice. It may be that Matt Ames is too young for the role of Harold, but his portrayal of the retired gangster lacked the slickness and savvy of a worldly, self-made man. In general, the demands of this weighty play seemed just beyond the abilities of the Cold Comfort troupe.

“Orphans” will be performed 8 p.m. through Aug. 22 at Emerson Hall on Court Street in Castine. For tickets, call 326-4104.