‘Ledge’ Teeters on Dated Techniques

Time was--before theater productions became hazardously expensive--a playwright wrote a script, found a producer and director and put the show on the boards.

Plays today usually go through a longer development process, including readings and what is known in the business as “the process.” By the time a play gets to a staged reading, audiences, including the public, are invited to observe and comment.

Playwright Gene Fiskin’s “View From the Ledge” is at that step, its staged reading held last weekend at Fullerton’s Vanguard Theatre under the auspices of the Orange County Playwrights Alliance.

For staged readings, actors rehearse minimally and usually carry scripts; the more adventurous learn their lines, to help create the illusion of a performance. Fiskin, who also directed, found good actors eager to give the play its best shot.

What they proved is that Fiskin has a workable script, but one that looks dated.

“View” concerns Killy Easter, co-owner of a Los Angeles ad agency, who’s about to lose his business. As the play opens, Killy stands outside his office window, deciding whether to jump. Business is not his only problem. His wife, Ellen, is divorcing him.

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What places the play stylistically in the late 1960s or early ‘70s is the lack of logic in its characters’ actions and Fiskin’s addiction to wild and crazy plot developments (similar to those in the early plays of John Guare and Christopher Durang). Killy is mugged in his office; the mugger becomes an important character, as does a woman from a neighboring office, who takes Killy home, causing her boyfriend to accuse Killy of rape.

And for no reason, except to be unusual, Killy has a blotch on his forehead that everyone thinks is salami.

Fiskin’s point--that Killy needs to separate himself from his current reality--is a strong one, but it could be much stronger with a less loony facade and more digging into the characters’ inner workings.