Stage Light

“Lost Causes and Impossible Loyalties,” an awkward title for an awkward play at the Sweet Lies Theatre, describes the irreconcilable conflicts underlying Brent London’s new work about a true Civil War incident.

Confederate soldier William Hillyer (William Lawrence Allen), arrested on a Northern train as a spy, turns out to have been the man who attempted to torch New York City in December 1864.

He confesses this to the one man who cannot legally implicate him--his attorney, Richard Drury (Scott Crawford).

Although Hillyer is the one behind bars, Drury is the manipulated chump through the play’s circuitous twists and turns.

The plot’s machinations tend to overwhelm London, especially surrounding a humble chambermaid named Mary Rice (Kate Randolph Burns), whose right foot was severely disfigured in a fire--not, significantly, the New York near-disaster.

This tends to distract London from the story’s moral dilemma: Can a Northern loyalist attorney, having just watched his beloved city nearly destroyed by a Rebel spy, actually defend him and conceal the damaging information he alone knows?

On paper, this is the stuff of Lawrence and Lee plays such as “Inherit the Wind” and “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail,” where jurisprudence, moral issues and historical events collide.

But London is much more comfortable with the emotional issues involving what develops into the love triangle of Mary, Drury and Hillyer than he is with the more profound issues suggested by the title.

In any case, London doesn’t help his cause with the ineffective framing device of presenting Drury and Hillyer as present-day ghosts haggling over the past.

Perhaps with greater production values (the ones here, under the auspices of the Dillon Street Players, are minimal in the extreme), more care in casting and a swifter, more stylish hand by director Kenneth McFarlane, the devices and story would become more enthralling.

Tilting toward the personal over the political complements Burns, who delivers a galvanizing, richly observed performance as Mary.

It harms Crawford, however, who never sounds completely at home with the dialogue or with the 19th-century setting (nor does Franco Vega, miscast as a ruthless detective).

With his whippersnapper energy, Allen easily overshadows Crawford, which works against the play-of-will’s intent.

“Lost Causes and Impossible Loyalties,” Sweet Lies Theatre at the Bitter Truth Theatre Complex, 11050 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 4:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 4 and 7:30 p.m. Ends May 15. $15. (818) 755-7900. Running time: two hours, 10 minutes.