Review: Washington Stage Guild sequel SEE ROCK CITY

Washington Stage Guild had a hit last year with the 1940s Americana romance "Last Train to Nibroc," so it's natural to want to stage the sequel by Arlene Hutton featuring the same pair of actors as the appealing couple, Lexi Langs and Wood Van Meter.

The Stage Guild specializes at sequels, as it became one of maybe three theaters to ever stage the whole of George Bernard Shaw's "Back to Methuselah" series, which it concluded last year. As Hollywood learned long ago, sequels are a sure way to attract audiences pre-sold on established characters and settings.

Hutton's sequel "See Rock City" has the newlyweds May and Raleigh returning to eastern Kentucky from their honeymoon, which was supposed to have been the widely-advertised Georgia vacation spot in the title, but they went to Cincinnati instead. When they return, they have all sorts of problems, from his struggles writing, to her job security once the war is over.

And then there are their mothers. One is sweet and knowing, the other intrusive and insulting.

"Rock City" is fun to watch because its central couple, who are both credible as young lovebirds and as representatives of a past. It's like watching an old Turner Classic Movies three-hanky special.

And yet there's something tire-spinning about being the central play in a trilogy - the characters have already been introduced and the ultimate denouement yet to come, so it occasionally plays more like a place-setter. The final direction of the couple only suggested in the final scenes.

"See Rock City" carries some of the characteristics of its origin - originally written as a one-scene coda, adding the mothers at a conference workshop where a couple of women hanging around needed parts. And while it is filled with some rich tales of the South, some plucked from Hutton's own past (her mother was a young principal; a long story about a dog wandering to church recalled verbatim from an uncle) it lacks some of its own cohesiveness, playing like an episode rather than a whole story.

There's something limited, too, in knowing the cast is just four people; May's dad may be slaving away the whole time in the garage, but we know we'll never see him in the flesh.

Similarly, action never shifts from the homey front porch set by Carl F. Gudenius and Xiaoxiao Wang. But director and artistic director Bill Largess has some subtle shifts, as when a gifted Cincinnati tea towel in scene one becomes well used by the show's end.

Of the quartet on stage, Langs and Van Meter still make a good match, and recall a whole era in their period clothes and hairstyles (costumes are by Noelle Cremer). Lynn Steinmetz is just right as her doting mother, bubbly and busy until tragedy cuts her to the quick and saps her spirit. Laura Giannarelli storms around in her brief scenes like Marjorie Main as Ma Kettle, to name a star of the period, except more passive-aggressive.

It's a bit of a surprise to see the sweetness of the romance so quickly fade by the play's end, pointing toward the eventual conclusion of the trilogy, "Gulf View Drive."

Which, if we know anything about the Washington Stage Guild, will be staged in a year. They know sequels, after all.

Running time: Two hours with one intermission.

Photo credit: Lynn Steinmetz, Lexi Langs and Wood Van Meter in "See Rock City." Photo by C. Stanley Photography.

"See Rick City" continues to Feb. 11 at the Washington Stage Guild's Undercroft Theatre, at the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Ave., NW. Tickets at 202-582-0050 or online.

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