Small Craft Warnings

In a 1971 letter to his producer about the upcoming Off-Broadway debut of his latest play, "Small Craft Warnings," Tennessee Williams wrote: "Since this play is so much talk and character, stock players, even the best stock players, will not suffice." Now, I'm not hurling the epithet of "stock" at the cast members of Mother of Invention's current production. Nevertheless, in director Austin Pendleton's one-step-above-a-staged-reading presentation, the actors largely fail to forge the kind of connections with and among their characters that would allow Williams' poetic ruminations on these denizens of Monk's Place, a shabby bar on the Southern California coast, to resonate.

At the play's center is Leona, a tough beautician on a "mean drunk" because her aging muscle-bound lover, Bill, a sometime hustler, is getting restless. Bill starts giving the eye to Violet, a fragile creature with no visible means of support and a habit of groping men. Steve, Violet's sort-of boyfriend, puts up with her behavior because the self-loathing short-order cook thinks he can't do better. Then there's the alcoholic Doc, a disbarred physician who still practices on the sly. Watching over them all is Monk, the bar's world-weary owner. The action happens in the course of one evening, and while there's very little plot, big changes occur in the characters' lives before the curtain comes down.

Gina Stahlnecker, the company's founder and artistic director, accentuates Leona's feistiness to the detriment of her vulnerability, and the actor's persistently staccato line readings don't always align with Williams' rhythms. Joe Ulam stays on the surface of the feckless Bill, and he and Stahlnecker never successfully suggest the couple's sexual bond. As Violet, Tammy Lang is too often blank and unfocused, though her use of a repetitive moaning in sections when Violet is supposed to be crying is an original and effective choice. Faring somewhat better are Eddy Lee Priest, whose Steve is convincingly gruff and defeated; Ross Kramberg, as a wary and paternal Monk; and John Greenleaf, who gives Doc an arresting sharpness.

But it's only when Pendleton and Adam Dodway, as Quentin and Bobby, an aging gay screenwriter and his much younger drifter pickup, arrive that the acting pops. Both men listen with freshness and spontaneity and arrive together with a relationship fully in place, however brief their characters' acquaintance. They also score big with contrasting monologues, in which Quentin talks unsentimentally about having lost his capacity for surprise, and Bobby gently relates his nonjudgmental, open embrace of life. Unfortunately, the characters are here and gone before Act 1 is over (the two-act play is done without taking an intermission).

I know you can have theater with only two planks and a passion, but if ever a play needed atmosphere, this one does. Staging it with nothing but lines of chairs on a set of black risers seems to be a monetary decision rather than an artistic one. In 2009, Pendleton directed a superb production of another lesser-known Williams play, "Vieux Carré," for the Pearl Theatre Company. Alas, he's not able to turn the same trick for Mother of Invention.

Presented by Mother of Invention at the Studio Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St., NYC. Feb. 19–27. Tue., 7 p.m.; Wed.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun, 3 p.m. (212) 239-6200, (800) 432-7250, or www.telecharge.com.