THEATER REVIEW : A New Dawn at Gaslamp : Stage: The theater company renews its suspended season with a darkly poignant play about coming to terms with tragedy.

SAN DIEGO —  There is something poignant about the choice of “Dusk to Dawn at the Sunset” for the renewal of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s suspended season.

Part of the poignancy comes from the juxtaposition of what should seem like the celebratory resumption of the Gaslamp season with the dark mood of the play. “Dusk to Dawn at the Sunset” is, ultimately, a story not about rebirth but about death--and the desire of two children to understand the despair that led to their mother’s probable suicide.

The show, a co-production of the Gaslamp with Ensemble Arts Theatre, plays at the Elizabeth North Theatre through Nov. 11.

The poignancy also stems from the fact that this is an Ensemble Arts Theatre production presented and co-produced by the Gaslamp. The company won’t be truly on its feet with its own fully produced work until it unveils the San Diego premiere of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” Nov. 29 at the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre.

But in the meantime, what is offered is a quiet, quality production of a contemporary play by a contemporary playwright, Terry Dodd, which has been developed and honed by the locally based Ensemble Arts Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland, where it played to positive reviews in the city’s annual Fringe Festival.

“Dusk to Dawn at the Sunset”--the title refers to the multiple-film shows that extend from dusk to dawn at the family’s favorite Sunset Drive-in--is a quiet play, one that treads softly into emotional terrain. There are no big moments, no sudden epiphanies, just vignettes coming off like photographs in an album.

For the most part, you draw your own conclusions. The playwright makes no strong, sweeping statements. What he has crafted, instead, is a memory play without the haunting imagery or the dramatic tensions of “The Glass Menagerie.” It is very much a play about “what happens to a dream deferred”--a dream deferred being a reference to the Langston Hughes poem that sets up another play about a family in crisis, “A Raisin in the Sun.”

When we meet the mother, Dorothy, she is young, lithe and lovely, and wants desperately to be a professional ballroom dancer. But she gave up her dream when she met Lonnie, the charming taxi driver who gave her a lift to the luncheon with the man who might have made a dancer out of her. Or might just have taken advantage of her. It was hard to tell.

The problem Dorothy finds, many years later, is that when you give up your dreams, even if you are giving them up for someone else, you have less and less to give to that person as time goes by. Except anger. And frustration. And self-loathing.

Then, too, Dorothy’s story is complicated by the fact, lightly glossed over, that she is a drinker.

The direction by Ginny-Lynn Safford, artistic director of Ensemble Arts Theatre, is never less than powerful. She hits the emotional marks squarely without belaboring the moments or indulging in pathos. Under her guidance, the acting ensemble of Safford as Dorothy, Louis Seitchik as Lonnie and Shana Wride and Michael Huckaby as the children, Sharon and Barry, coheres as a believable family unit and brings out the pain of a family at odds with each other.

The set by Paul Bedington subtly suggests the family’s dry, sun-bleached Las Cruces, N.M., home and is nicely lit by Keoni. The costumes by Jeanne Reith are simple and appropriate, without being distracting. The sound design by Pea Hicks records the passage of the decades with a travelogue of pop songs.

Playwright Dodd has been reworking “Dusk to Dawn at the Sunset” since 1983, and, even with the fine production here, it conclusively demonstrates that more work is needed.

Despite the skill of the line-to-line writing, what the show lacks is dramatic momentum--an invisible thread of tension pulling the disparate scenes together. Without it, the two-hour play without intermission seems long. The feeling this show should leave is a poignancy about the brevity of the life of the mother that is mourned, and the brevity of the play that serves as her memorial.

“DUSK TO DAWN AT THE SUNSET”

By Terry Dodd. Director is Ginny-Lynn Safford. Set by Paul Bedington. Costumes by Jeanne Reith. Lighting by Keoni. Sound by Pea Hicks. Stage manager is Kelly Jo Little. With Michael Huckaby, Ginny-Lynn Safford, Louis Seitchik and Shana Wride. At 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday with Sunday matinees at 2 through Nov. 11. Tickets are $12.50-$15. At 547 4th Ave., San Diego, 234-9583.