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Friday, December 20, 2002

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic

Coming-of-age plays are a theatrical staple, of which sexual coming-of-age is a natural variant. "Stop/Kiss" is that further subdivision, the lesbian coming-out play.

	'Stop/Kiss' WHERE: Cloven Hoof Productions at Peter Mills Auditorium, Rockwell Hall, Duquesne University. WHEN: 8 tonight and Saturday. TICKETS: $10-$12; 412-761-3947.

To the credit of Diana Son, her light comedy-drama is generally free of the earnest, lugubrious posturing with which cultural groups sometimes dramatize their rites of passage. At its best, it is a charming account of a young woman (nearly 30, say) skittishly exploring her sexuality (bi? gay?) without ever tackling the subject straight on.

Not that the play is always at its best, of course. The very circumspection with which Callie sidesteps her own conflict can turn precious. And Sara, the object of her affection, remains largely blank, so Callie is pretty much the whole story.

Playwright Son devises a structural oddity: While the central story moves forward in a great many brief episodes toward the fateful night when Callie and Sara actually go to a lesbian bar and kiss for the first time, other, intercut scenes project us into the future after a gay-basher has left Sara in a coma. It initially takes a while to figure out where we are in the chronology, but director John E. Lane Jr. schematizes it by setting the forward scenes in the center of the stage and using the sides for the unhappy flash-forwards.

Son's dialogue has that bright, self-congratulatory wit that squeezes in clever things that don't really relate to situation or character. In her defense, many of them actually are clever, in a Seinfeldian-insightful kind of way, and maybe they do illustrate the defensive intellectual posturing of unsure young adults.

As Callie is the center of interest, so is actress Kim Zelonis, who gives her a disarming mix of self-conscious smirk and willful diffidence. That is, some of the time she seems hyper aware of what's going on under the surface, some of the time she doesn't, and some of the time she seems determined to know as little as possible. With so much dependent on her, it's a personally appealing performance but very erratic, sometimes spot on and sometimes oddly off register.

MaryRose Helffrich is a dour Sara, clothed in inhibition, showing no obvious pleasure in Callie's company -- it's hard to see what Callie sees in her.

Jay Keenan, Kath Donnelly and Corey Rieger provide support. Joe Pauley is very awkward in a small role, but as the producer of Cloven Hoof, he is clearly important to the project.

If you rejoice when you see that a play is done without intermission, figuring it can't be too long, do not be fooled: "Stop/Kiss" comes in a 1 3/4 hours and feels long. There's a lot of repetition as the story crawls toward its obvious (modestly upbeat) destination.

The upturn is a result of Callie facing up to her feelings. But is the play so light as it here seems? Given more intense and capable acting, it might have the darker feel that the gay-bashing (not shown) leads you to expect. I can't tell.

On the program, the title is typographically represented as "STOP/Kiss," in order, I guess, to suggest a STOP sign and then a forward rush of satisfaction. I was happy to hear Son and watch Zelonis, without ever feeling that rush.

Christopher Rawson can be reached at crawson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1666.