STAGE REVIEW : Homey Feeling Ends as Soon as the Play Begins : California Cottage Theatre has a cozy setting and ample talent but its show is grueling.

The adventure in going to the California Cottage Theatre production of the demonic thriller “The One Less Traveled” is the cozy venue, not the show.

Until the footlights go up, expectations are unusually high, because this theater is a private living room in a small house on a leafy street in Van Nuys. Being one of the 28 guests (that’s all the living room will seat) fills you with the promise of something special.

You walk up a shady driveway to the back yard and are immediately greeted by guests gathered on the back porch, eating fresh cookies baked by the director’s wife.

This is a theater so solicitous that it even describes its location with a Thomas Guide tip (“Page 22 D 2”) on its invitation, which is mailed to you after you call for information. Once you’ve filed through the narrow hallways to the playing area, with shorter people separated from their mates and seated down front to assure clear sight lines (which still remain difficult), you’re in the mood for a warm domestic comedy, maybe even a story of minor human frailties--but not an opening scene featuring the body of a slain young woman lying across the living room floor.

Cottage founder and director Roy Brocksmith, a veteran actor modestly operating in the fine tradition of actor-managers, is committed to the exclusive development of new plays. But in my two trips to the Cottage, the play selection has been bizarre, to put it mildly--almost a shock, given the chummy ambience.

Cary Pepper’s “The One Less Traveled” (apparently inspired by the Robert Frost poem) is well acted and skillfully staged by Brocksmith in the tight arena playing area. Technical credits are also good. So this theater has the talent, if only the material were more playable.

Essentially a neurotic standoff between two warped and sociopathic lowlifes (Laurence Overmire’s crazed murderer and Michael Liscio’s thuggish intruder), the play is repetitive, loud, and finally, grueling.

None of the characters (including a couple of cops who resolve matters at the end) are sympathetic. And whatever psychological posturing or implicit commentary about violence is evident here, the adventure at the Cottage Theatre really ends when those footlights go up.

To their credit, Overmire and Liscio are two vivid actors, distinctively maddening in their lies and their desperate brinkmanship. And the physical fights (courtesy of “combat choreographer” Al Juliano) are the real, raw thing, right under your chin.

WHERE and WHEN

Play: “The One Less Traveled.”

Location: California Cottage Theatre, 5220 Sylmar Ave., Van Nuys.

Hours: 8 p.m. Thursday and July 17; 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. July 18, Aug. 13 to 15, Sept. 17 to 19; runs one weekend each month through December.

Price: Free.

Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Call: (818) 990-5773.