by Joel Elkins

There is something familiar, almost comforting, about Ten Cent Night (now playing at the Victory Theatre Center). Beginning with the set, the weathered facade and front porch of a rickety, backwoods ranch house that could be located in just about any rural area in the country, but this time happens to be in Texas. Add to that a familiar Southern drawl, some archetypal characters, classic themes and you’d swear you’ve been there before.

The play is billed as a comedy, but that’s only in the Shakespearean not-everyone-dies-in-the-end or a country-western “if I still have all my teeth and no one’s trying to shoot me, I’m having a good day” sort of way. I’d call it more lighthearted dysfunction. Sort of “Hee-Haw” meets “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf.” That’s not to say that the characters are one-dimensional or the situations over-the-top absurd. On the contrary, they are richly drawn and superbly acted.

The action switches between this small town Texan home and a honky-tonk in New Orleans (and places in between), during which we learn of the past and ongoing travails of the Finley family, offspring of relatively famous singer-songwriter Hewitt Finley. Needless to say (remember it is a country western song written for the stage), everyone’s got issues. One child has a major inferiority complex, another is terminally ill, another can’t shake his romantic feelings for his own flesh and blood and the fourth has such family issues that she has run clear across to another state in order to escape them. The parents? Oh, yeah, they both killed themselves. Not your typical ingredients for a comedy.

However, there are plenty of laughs and comic situations, such as struggling singer (“I won’t sing my daddy’s songs”) Rory hitchhiking across the South handcuffed to a folding chair and carrying a guitar case (but no guitar), chased by, among others, the mute boyfriend she had just dumped. (C’mon, who can’t relate to that?)

As far as I’m concerned, a play lives or dies on its dialogue, and the dialogue of Marisa Wegrzyn here definitely breathes life. It is fresh, believable and smart. But it flourishes at the hands (in one case literally) of a brilliant cast. Tara Buck fills the role of Roby perfectly, and Alison Rood and Shane Zwiner are compelling as the younger siblings going through the typical and not-so-typical issues of surviving (again, in one case literally) their teenager years. Caitlin Muelder dominates the stage as the eldest sibling forced into the role of matriarch, and delivers many of the more humorous lines of the night with fine comic timing and Southern drawl.

(As an aside, I admit I am not the greatest judge of accents. Hell, for years I thought Cockneys really sounded like Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins.” I even thought Marion Ross did a pretty decent Eastern European accent in “Brooklyn Bridge” — and I’m Jewish. But the Southern accents here sounded pretty good to me.)

In fact, the acting was so consistent from top to bottom that when the curtain call began, for a brief moment I wondered why Gareth Williams (as “good old boy” Roscoe Lamar) and Kathy Bailey (as your friendly neighborhood lady of comfort Lila Mozelle) had come out first. I quickly realized that, technically, they had played minor characters. However, their performances belied the assumption that the importance of a role can be judged by the number of lines spoken. And nowhere is that more disproved than by the role of Danny, the innocent mute who falls in love with Roby. Despite speaking no lines throughout the entire play, Martin Papazian delivers a brilliant performance.

As the sun set on the Finely home and on the play, as the stories converged, came to a head and worked themselves out, I found myself feeling strangely content, as if this was how things were supposed to be. As if I’d seen this before, and yet I know I hadn’t. As if I should have seen this coming all along. As if life – and theatre – had a plan.

Ten Cent Night is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 4 pm through June 14, 2009

The Victory Theatre Center is located at 3326 W. Victory Blvd., 1 block east of Hollywood Way in Burbank

Ticket prices: $22/$34 (Group/senior/student rates available)

Reservations online at www.thevictorytheatrecenter.org or by phone at (818) 841-5421