Also Playing

The Ellis Jump

 ((Met Theatre; 42 seats; $ 15 top) The Met Theatre presents a comedy in one act by Jim McGrath. Directed by Ron Orbach; set and lighting design, Thomas A. Brown; costume design, Stephanie Kerley Schwartz; sound design , Jonathan T. Hagans. Opened Oct. 7; r)

By HOYT HILSMAN

Rogue Texas parole officer Cody Hicks (Barry Cullison) has always used sadistic psychological warfare to exploit his parolees, but his tactics are catching up with him. His high-strung, idealistic supervisor, Ruth (Julie White) , tries to fire him at the beginning of the play, but spends the rest of her time trying to make the dismissal stick.
 

Thrown into this parole hell is Jinx Baxter (Bruce Wright), who spent 15 years in jail after committing petty crimes and then being declared a "habitual offender" under state law. Baxter wants desperately to go straight, but is caught in the Kafkaesque web of parole officer Hicks.

To make matters worse for Baxter, temptation is tossed in his path in the form of Hicks' wife, Wendy (Dawn Maxey), who has fixed on Baxter as the answer to her dreams. In this case, her dreams involve robbing a bank and leaving her husband.

McGrath's play rips across a landscape of genres and tones.Throughout, there is the specter of Sam Shepard's mythology of angry losers, but without the visceral pain of Shepard's characters. McGrath's dialogue, on the other hand, strays into the crimespeak of films of the '30s, humorous but often self-conscious.

While the story is engaging and delightfully unpredictable, the characters never quite get off the launch pad. This may in part be the choice made by director Ron Orbach, who keeps the action moving at a brisk pace, but never finds the deeper emotional points in the characters. However, playwright McGrath may want to expand this long one-act into a full-length play to give his characters the chance to gather more emotional steam.

The actors give generally fine performances, although they do seem to be somewhat tethered emotionally. Cullison is skillful and convincing as the evil Hicks, who certainly rivals some of the more infamous villains in dramatic literature. White is wonderfully offbeat as the neurotic parole supervisor, living from one emotional twitch to the next.

Maxey is refreshingly spunky as Hicks' gum-chewing wife, finding thecharacter's raw vulnerability. Wright also is good as the beleaguered parolee , although his understated interpretation is sometimes at odds with the other perfs.

While director Orbach seems to skim over some of the depth of the play, he does create a strong, entertaining tone for the piece, which effectively moves from comedy to drama and back. Set and lighting design by Thomas A. Brown are convincing in the bare-bones space, as are costumes by Stephanie Kerley Schwartz.