That old familial feeling

Donald Margulies ventures into familiar territory in “Brooklyn Boy,” at South Coast Repertory. His remarkable gift of building characterization through realistic dialogue is undiminished. But his new play, satisfying on most levels, lacks the sense of revelation that we’ve come to expect from his work.

In the ‘90s, Margulies helped redeem the reputation of realistic theater. His “Sight Unseen,” “Collected Stories” and “Dinner With Friends” were replete with intimate conversations between two, three or four people. Margulies didn’t try to create the sort of theatrical flourishes that are often seen as an essential way of separating the stage from the screen. Yet the plays still felt unpredictable, as they delved into subjects and feelings that had seldom been so brilliantly articulated.

“Brooklyn Boy” is about the inner life of a writer who has unresolved issues with his father. This subject has been so frequently dramatized that sometimes it seems as if every modern writer has tackled it. Indeed, Margulies’ play is dedicated to playwright Herb Gardner, who wrote “Conversations With My Father.”

The writer in Margulies’ play is Eric Weiss (Adam Arkin). He was a Brooklyn boy, decades ago. Now, he’s a middle-aged man from Manhattan. His latest novel, “Brooklyn Boy,” is an autobiographically inspired story about a boy’s coming of age. It’s his first book to hit the bestseller charts. But his recent professional success cannot disguise his feeling that the rest of his life is barren.

A reviewer of Eric’s novel described the “aching ruefulness that underlies the comedy” -- a line that has been picked up for the book jacket, used as a merchandising tool. The same line could easily appear on the jacket of the published version of Margulies’ play. The script is full of aching ruefulness that underlies the comedy. That Margulies has fun with this line seems to signal that he’s aware of the potential for cliche when dealing with such a well-trodden subject.

Margulies’ mastery of dialogue usually spares him from falling abjectly into cliches. All but one of the play’s scenes are duets, and most of these conversations are written with such precision and humor that they serve as a welcome rejoinder to one character who claims that today’s audiences “can’t stay glued to a scene for five minutes.”

Eric is the link between the scenes. In between stops on his book promotion tour, he visits his dying father (Allan Miller) in a Brooklyn hospital room. Next, in the hospital lobby, he encounters a boyhood friend, Ira Zimmer (Arye Gross). Then he pays a visit to his estranged wife (Dana Reeve) in Manhattan.

After intermission, Eric is in L.A., first in his hotel room with a young, female admirer (Ari Graynor) and then at a movie studio with the producer (Mimi Lieber) of the proposed movie based on his novel. Their tete-a-tete is briefly interrupted by the arrival of the young TV star (Kevin Isola) who wants to play the leading role in the movie.

On Eric’s return to New York, he is cleaning out his now-deceased father’s apartment when he is paid a condolence call by Ira. Then he is briefly visited, in his thoughts, by the old man.

Throughout most of the play, Arkin’s Eric maintains a countenance of ineffable sadness. His father belittles his success. Ira is happy about Eric’s success on the one hand but jealous of it on the other -- Ira feels trapped running his own despised father’s family deli -- and this makes Eric even more morose.

The most immediate cause of Eric’s depression is apparent in his scene with his soon-to-be ex-wife. Although he begins in a relatively jovial mood, trying to win her back, it soon becomes clear that his success is one of the factors in their breakup -- it reinforces her sense of failure in her own writing career.

In the studio scene, Arkin’s resolutely glum quality edges toward horror as he realizes what’s in store for his novel on film. Margulies’ potshots at Hollywood are, again, nothing new, but they’re very funny.

Later, Eric ruthlessly rejects Ira’s attempts to reconnect him with his roots.

The play could end here, but it would be bleak, especially by the standards of Broadway, where this production is headed in a few months. The play does not end until after Eric imagines a tentative reconciliation with his father.

Without describing too much about that final scene, let’s just say that Eric’s change of mood is awfully quick and questionable. While a novelist might well try to invent a way of coming to terms with his dead father, wouldn’t Eric already have done this in the course of writing his book? Here it happens in about five minutes and feels like a way to send the audience out with a glimmer of hope -- which it certainly manages to do.

Still, it’s not as if Eric would suddenly join the Optimist Club if there were another scene. He’ll probably return to his sad-sack ways tomorrow.

Arkin is terrific at remaining likable as well as gloomy. Under the direction of Daniel Sullivan, no one comes off as a villain -- even Isola’s shallow TV star proves surprisingly adept at reading lines from Eric’s screenplay.

Miller contributes a sharply etched portrayal of a frightened old man who uses sarcasm to ward off intimacy, and Gross depicts Ira’s ambivalent feelings with crystalline clarity.

Ralph Funicello’s photorealistic backdrop of a Brooklyn brownstone helps provide a sense of place. But Eric is never seen on the street outside that brownstone. The play isn’t about Brooklyn, nor is it about a boy -- it’s about a man without a home.