Stage

Mistaken identity is always an unsettling device on stage. Most of the time its effect is comic. When Grandma Josephine Whitaker starts mistaking her children for people who aren't there, it's nothing to laugh about. Indeed, getting the family to face up to the decline of its matriarch wrenches everyone into a new shape.

From a distance, Appleseed Productions' mounting of Elizabeth Diggs' Close Ties, about a privileged WASP family that vacations at a summer home it has owned for 50 years, looks like a cousin of Ernest Thompson's more sentimental On Golden Pond, only relocated to the Berkshires. Despite all the pretense of relaxing in the warm weather, old resentments have not been forgotten, and new frictions are heating up.

Law has been the family profession. Watson Frye (Bob Fullenbaum) has married eldest daughter Bess Whitaker Frye (Cathy Greer-English) and taken over the firm from his late father-in-law. Grandma Josephine (Susan Palmer Everly) looks quite fit when it comes to gardening, and she laments what she sees as a retreat from progressive values.

Three younger daughters include the 30ish and sensible Anna (Nancy Amidon), the divorced and fractious Evelyn (Kristie L. Grant) and kid sister Connie (Lisa Coombs), a nursing student. Also in the household is Watson and Bess' teen-age son Thayer (Justin Noce), a not-so-cute kid given to blaring Black Sabbath on his boombox.

Most of the surface tension in the family comes from the strident and opinionated Evelyn, whom sources identify as the playwright's unsympathetic projection of herself. She lectures the sisters on horror stories from women's history and throws their food on the floor, declaring it inedible junk. An enemy of privilege, although proud of her status as a Harvard student, Evelyn opines that only the struggle of being a member of a persecuted group allows one to realize her full potential. To which young Thayer helpfully replies, "You could become a lesbian."

Evelyn's boyfriend Ira Bienstock (Rob Stewart), in whom she pretends only a sexual interest, is the outsider who becomes a catalyst. Through him, the rest of the family re-examines relations and also finds the means of facing up to Grandma Josephine's ever-loosening grip on reality.

Close Ties is a labor of love for director Dan Tursi, one of the strongest presences in local theater, who has helmed the show in earlier productions outside the Syracuse area. It's also a change of pace for Tursi, better known for outrageous comedy and razzle-dazzle musicals, like his recent triumph with the Talent Company's Chicago at the State Fairgrounds' New Times Theater. Tursi and actress Everly successfully remove Josephine from cliche and give her a tight body set, something akin to Estelle Getty without the gags. Her temper tantrums come on quickly, like low-key Jekyll and Hyde transformations, frightening but quick to pass.

While all members of the cast perform at a high standard, Close Ties marks a real departure for actress Grant, who plays Evelyn. Grant is seen most often as an adorable sweetheart, like Agnes Nolan in George M! With her strident strut and sneering lip, however, her Evelyn's bark achieves real bite.

Not new, Close Ties first appeared in 1981 and has played major regional theaters across North America. Appleseed, a company always willing to take chances, is giving the show its long-delayed area premiere.

This production runs through Nov. 9. See Times Table for information.

--James MacKillop