In Sam Shepard's "The Late Henry Moss," estranged brothers Earl and Ray attempt to come to terms with their childhood and their relationship to their recently deceased father. As they do so, this man's final days come to life in mystical scenes that blur the characters' realities. Director Cyndy A. Marion maneuvers Shepard's play easily and intoxicatingly, unfolding it gracefully on Matt Downs McAdon's appropriately squalid kitchen set.
James Wetzel takes a no-nonsense, businesslike approach to the role of Earl, the older of the two brothers, making him seem much more stable than Ray. Wetzel subtly communicates the seething rage and secrets that lurk under this placid exterior, giving the production dramatic weight from its outset.
Whenever Ray explodes, Rod Sweitzer succeeds admirably, executing Michael G. Chin's fight choreography viciously, inspiring cringes in the audience. Sweitzer is less effective as Ray attempts to remember and reclaim his childhood, however. Here the actor relies on a wistful, glassy-eyed stare that rarely communicates the depth of the character's emotion.
When the play flashes back to Henry's final days, Debra Leigh Siegel's effective and haunting lighting turns a dreamy magenta as Bill Fairbairn's crotchety and, by turns, loveable and menacing drunk takes center stage, bemoaning the fact that girlfriend Conchalla (a forceful and alluring Sylvia Roldรกn Dohi) has proclaimed publicly that he is dead. Fairbairn's Henry sobers up marvelously for the play's penultimate moments, when the man recounts his spiritual death.
Bridging these two worlds -- Henry's life and death -- are Esteban and Taxi, two men on whom the brothers rely as they work to understand their father's later life. Alfonso Ramirez and David Runco bring the necessary comic talents to these roles, aptly balancing the viciousness of Ray and Earl's reunion and the swirling dream of Henry and Conchalla's strange pas de deux.