STAGE REVIEW : An Engaging ‘Prelude’ at La Mirada

No matter what the song says, a kiss is never just a kiss in Craig Lucas’ “Prelude to a Kiss.” It’s a close encounter of the strangest kind.

The play, which had its Los Angeles County premiere Thursday at the La Mirada Theatre, is a quixotic fable, a stylish puzzlement much closer to the idea of the Frog who turns into a Prince than any more logical spin might explain. As in all fairy tales, we are not meant to rationalize, merely to click our heels three times and believe .

What that will get you is a sophisticated evening of theater in the company of a playfully rueful couple, Peter and Rita, who meet at a party, court briefly, decide this must be love and marry. Would that, as in any self-respecting fairy tale, they merely went on to live happily ever after. In fact they may, but not before an embrace at the wedding from an old man who wanders in wanting only to kiss the bride, effects a curious sea change in the lively Rita.

What follows is a fairly harrowing roller-coaster ride for Peter, who, during a Jamaican honeymoon, finds he can’t be sure that he married the woman he thought he’d married. Everything that happens suggests to him that he’s trapped in a Twilight Zone--until he steps into the bar where Rita once worked and finds himself face to face with the old man who gave his bride that fateful kiss.

To explain more of “Prelude” (the word should be taken seriously) would be to shear it of its charm, and charm is the key element it runs on. In this edition of the play, director Scott Rogers makes sure that, moment to moment, developments are clear to the point of transparency.

This is extremely helpful, even if it slightly diminishes the mantle of mystery that enveloped the original 1988 staging at South Coast Repertory--a classier one than the staging that eventually surfaced on Broadway, though just as elusive.

There’s no such skittishness at La Mirada, where Ron Campbell as Peter and Stephanie Erb as the unpredictable Rita deliver their tentative, uncertain characters with an assurance that belies their confusion and doubt. The elliptical style of the writing, the scenes that glide smoothly from dialogue among friends or lovers to direct address to the audience, lend this modern fable a certain postmodern distance. We empathize, we root for these two lonely people, even as they keep us at arm’s length.

Yes, definitely a play for the ‘90s--smart and brittle and, in this version, unusually accessible.

Campbell is a wonderfully bewildered Peter who betrays his pain the more he tries to conceal it. Erb’s lovely, impulsive Rita turns cold on a dime when that moment happens over which she has no control. And Robert Mandan, as the surreptitious old man who steals from her much more than a little kiss, is all the more affecting for the struggle he puts up--a struggle that may be as much a part of the act as a factor of coming to the company late. (He succeeded the ailing John Randolph in the part who himself had succeeded Tom Poston.)

Whatever it is, it works.

Underneath the shiny surfaces, “Prelude to a Kiss” is a play about personality or, as Lucas puts it, “the miracle of another human being.” Obliquely, it questions what makes us who and what we are, carrying the theme in a minor key through to Rita’s parents.

Just when you think Dr. Boyle is solid (Joseph Ruskin as a pillar of the community) and Mrs. Boyle a routine housewife (Joyce Bulifant as a sweet and ditzy middle-aged blond), they turn the tables on us. She’s more prescient and aware than the doc, and he blinder than we thought. Not that either is much more than a pencil sketch of pleasant, aging stereotypes, but they do hold those small surprises.

For a play that dabbles in magic, Joanne Trunick McMaster has designed a singularly unmagical set, full of forbidding ramparts that manage to distance us all the more. (On purpose perhaps? The Broadway set by Loy Arcenas was equally unappealing, though not the one he’d designed at South Coast Rep.)

Otherwise, there’s much to rejoice about here: brisk pacing, a solid supporting cast (Kelly Jean Peters has a particularly affecting cameo as the old man’s distraught daughter), fine principals, a seductive play and a lucid staging.

Witchcraft enough.

“Prelude to a Kiss,” La Mirada Theatre, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends next Sun. $23-$27; (213) 944-9801. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

‘Prelude to a Kiss’

Ron Campbell: Peter

Michael Frank: Taylor

Stephanie Erb: Rita

Donald Willis: Tom/Jamaican Waiter

Joyce Bulifant: Mrs. Boyle

Joseph Ruskin: Dr. Boyle

Bob Schroeder: Minister

Kelly Jean Peters: Aunt Dorothy/Leah

Robert Mandan: Old Man

Executive producer Herb Rogers. Director Scott Rogers. Playwright Craig Lucas. Sets Joanne Trunick McMaster. Lights Raun Yankovich. Costumes Donna Barrier. Sound Chuck McCaroll. Props Kat Graeber. Stage manager Steven Donner.