Four emotionally scarred individuals get a second chance at happiness in Monica Wood’s The Half-Light, a Theatre 40 West Coast Premiere whose touching performances and message of hope make this heartstrings-tugger a bona fide audience-pleaser.

Community Education Department secretary Helen (Stephanie Erb) has spent the past dozen or more years dealing both with university politics and with her now 20something daughter Teresa (Abigail Stewart), an in-and-out-of-rehab alcoholic who now claims to be sober … and living in a haunted house.

Meanwhile over in the English department, divorced secretary Iris (Ivy Khan) finds herself stuck in a job “managing a pack of babies who never learned how to say thank you,” and to make matters worse, she’s never once left town for any place worth mentioning.

(On the plus side, Iris’s innate ability to pay “profound attention” might mean that she can see the spirits of the deceased, a talent that could come in handy given Teresa’s assertion that a ghost keeps asserting its presence in the run-down house she currently calls home.)

Indeed, only Irish literature professor Andrew (Grinnell Morris) would seem to have it all, a blissful marriage, two adorable young sons, and a job he absolutely loves.

Then comes a phone call conveying the worst possible news any husband or father could ever hope not to hear, upon which audience members can be excused for assuming Iris will be called upon to use her paranormal skills to contact the recently departed in Andrew’s life.

She isn’t, which might seem a missed opportunity, but what playwright Wood has in mind is something rather more subtle, as Iris’s ability to release ghosts from the ties that have kept them bound to this earth serves primarily as a metaphor for what is at The Half-Light’s heart, the need in each of us to be given a second chance at happiness, even when all seems lost.

The Half-Lights also scores high marks for featuring characters we care about and whose happily-ever-afters we can’t help rooting for.

I’m less fond of the way it is structured as a series of 22 scenes in just 90 minutes (not counting intermission), a format that lends itself better to film than to stage, where longer scenes can prove more involving and impactful while multiple shorter ones tend to interrupt the flow when occurring rat-a-tat-tat one after another.

Fortunately, director Ann Hearn Tobolowsky keeps things moving as smoothly as possible aided by Theatre 40’s extra wide stage, one which doesn’t require furniture to be moved on and off the way a narrower playing area would.

And Tobolowsky earns high marks for the all-around topnotch performances she has elicited from Khan (giving Iris equal parts warmth and depth), Erb (at her dynamic, acerbic best), Morris (powerful and moving as a man who’s lost everything), and Stewart (as splendid as a recovering bad girl as the was at playing every parent’s dream daughter in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner).

Jeff G. Rack’s multipurpose scenic design would benefit from a bit more set decoration (no matter the playwright’s instructions that “setting is minimal”) and I know I’m not the only audience member to wonder why Iris never changes clothes over the course of two years. (I was given an explanation by a cast member after the show, but I’d never have figured it out in a million years.)

The rest of Michael Mullen’s costume design choices are spot-on, lighting designer Derrick McDaniel and sound designer Nick Foran have joined forces for some dramatic, scary effects, and Ben Rock’s projections prove effective scene setters, with special snaps to one particularly lovely animated sequence.

The Half-Light is produced by David Hunt Stafford. Bill Froggatt is stage manager. Philip Sokolof is publicist.

Past Theatre 40 winners like Late Company, Sequence, and the recent Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help have revealed the company’s talent for introducing  L.A. audiences to largely unknown regional gems.

Though The Half-Light didn’t work quite as well for me as those three did, it nonetheless left me with a smile on my face and hope in my heart, the best possible feeling to have at this holiday-season time of year.

Theatre 40, 241 S. Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills.
www.Theatre40.org

-Steven Stanley
November 26, 2023
Photos: Eric Keitel

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Monica Wood, Theatre 40