Combat Zone

A war zone isn’t always one in which the bullets and missiles pierce bodies in bloody destruction. In Frank D. Gilroy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “The Subject Was Roses,” the war is waged on the domestic home front, and the grenades lobbed are cruel remarks for real and imagined slights. The carnage is a family torn apart.

Director Peter Goodman could tighten the scene transitions, and Federico Fabrezzi’s scenic design is sloppy, but actors Steve Gunning, Susan Kussman and Matthew T. Wilson give the piece a heartfelt revival at the Company of Angels Theatre.

For a Bronx-born lad, what is worse--the European battlefields of World War II or the proximity of his bickering parents? No one expected the once sickly Timmy (Wilson) to survive the war--not his father, John (Gunning), and particularly not his doctor. Yet oddly enough, Timmy says, “The day I left this house, I was never sick.”

On the day after his return, Timmy’s father gruffly admits that he never expected to see his son again, yet he spends more time ruminating about his great regret--that his own manhood was never tested during World War I.

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Only Timmy’s mother, Nettie (Kussman), had faith that her “exceptional” boy would return. She waited three years, carefully planning each moment with a precision that invites disappointment. She’s crushed when Timmy can’t remember his favorite breakfast.

Further, Nettie claims John is ruining Timmy’s return with his competitive drinking--which leaves Timmy sick every night.

Wilson is a slight, wan figure standing next to the more energetic, big-boned Gunning. His Timmy shifts uneasily between being peacemaker, pacifier and clown, creating the uncomfortable triangle of a child caught between his two parents.

With her snazzy red hair, Kussman’s Nettie blossoms into tender reflection at the sight of the roses in the title. Nettie used to receive a dozen red roses for her birthday every year from her now long-dead father. But the man she married is very different from her father.

In Goodman’s staging, neither parent is played as the heavy, but both are seen as tragically caught in different cycles of rejection, hurt and anger. When Timmy offers to yield to his father’s wishes, his father, embarrassed at Timmy’s display of affection and his own slight betrayal of unmanly tenderness, turns away in awkward rejection.

This isn’t a perfect production. Its stalled timing seriously hinders the emotional momentum, and its haphazardly stained woodwork will make painters cringe. But the actors at times overcome these obstacles to capture the ache of the civil wars hidden in American homes everywhere.

BE THERE

“The Subject Was Roses,” Company of Angels Theatre, 2106 Hyperion Ave., Silver Lake. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 13. $15-$10. (323) 883-1717. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.