Reunions can be such tetchy things, and in Kathleen Tolan's look at close college buds who manage a brief regrouping in the exurbs of Wisconsin in 1979, tetchy is putting it mildly. When popular lesbian folksinger Nessa (a dynamic Katrina Phillips) blasts into town with her mousy girlfriend Sam (Jessica Bassman) in tow, she parks at the home of her dear married friends David (David Ackert) and Doe (Marybeth Scherr). David's brother—and Nessa's ex-boyfriend—Jim (Joe Camareno) just happens to be free to visit that same weekend. Flagrant violations of the host-guest relationship make this domestic potboiler possible.
Nessa and Sam want a baby and have decided that Jim would be the most acceptable provider of DNA. This is to be done in the old-fashioned way, mind you—artificial insemination being too, well, artificial. But that it were so simple. If I may hint at the possibilities extant: David, a psychiatrist, has a highly unstable patient phoning in with alarming frequency; Jim is suffering sketcher's block, Dody is suffering writer's block and nurturing an emotional wound that could be a play unto itself, and even the nonentity Sam is able to pull childhood hurts out of thin air. Costume choices (Danielle Morrow Bray) are at least understated, looking right without screaming period piece.
It must be said, however, that Phillips portrays a highly effective magnet. Even though she's stuck with the feminist "Think about it!" diatribes, she's convincing both as a political polemicist and a rather fun lesbian. Scherr provides a nice balance, the domesticated woman whose passions are as deep but placed on simmer. The casting of Ackert and Camareno as the brothers Rabinowitz is odd, as Camareno is about as Hispanic as a guy can get (and no, Jim isn't adopted). Camareno is appealingly comfortable, though Ackert takes the opportunity to be contrastingly overbearing perhaps a tad far. Bassman isn't given all that much to do, so she creates this interesting character who manages to be simultaneously wan and weird.
Jeff G. Rack's set design, shared with the concurrently running The Bang and the Clatter, is a riot of Midwestern browns and beiges. It has a comfortable look, but the staircase is such that any time actors go to the kitchen you await a head bang as they turn the corner, and director Paul Millet hasn't effectively figured out how to handle the front door area. The rest of Millet's contributions are admirable, although I wish somebody would have cut that damned dog-on-tape. Lesbians traveling with a dog named Butch probably struck Tolan as funny or symbolic, but having every character's exit punctuated by offstage barking makes one long for a rolled-up newspaper with which to lightly swat the writer.
"A Weekend Near Madison," presented by and at the Eclectic Company Theatre, 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd., N. Hollywood. Sun. 7 p.m., Mon. 8 p.m. May 11-June 16. $15. (818) 508-3003.