Problems tarnish 'Autumn' gold

RALEIGH -- For a play that promotes the value of being true to yourself, "Gods of Autumn" employs artifice to an unfortunate degree.

A world premiere by Broadway writer Jack Murphy ("The Civil War"), which closes Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy's season, "Gods" is a peculiar blend of poignancy, clichés and fussy philosophy.

It plays as if its core -- the relationship between one man and the two women he cares for -- had been fine-tuned for years, with the remaining scenes and characters hurriedly added on to fill it out.

This sort of qualitative hodgepodge is common when a playwright serves as his own director, as is the case with Murphy. Playwrights and directors frequently clash during a play's development, but there's value in their debates. Without them, worthy projects can crash and burn unnecessarily.

With "Gods of Autumn," the unevenness is extreme, with exquisite attributes and ghastly faults. Is it worth wading through the muck to get to the gold? Not quite.

Murphy's gold is a pair of gifted Broadway actors playing a trio of roles that are idiosyncratic and genuine, with gentle humor and unique manners of expression. The muck is everything else.

The play is set in a New York City-area outpatient cancer ward, with three patients whose appointments routinely fall at the same time.

Jarrod Emick plays Jimmy, a career criminal with a heart of gold -- a dramatic cliché, but portrayed in such a way as to make it seem novel. Emick won a Tony Award for "Damn Yankees" and also played lead roles in "The Boy From Oz" and other Broadway shows. His appearance here is a coup for Hot Summer Nights.

Jessica Phillips plays Jimmy's brassy former mate Bernadette and also the reserved Mary, a fellow patient whom Jimmy woos. Phillips works well with the two extremes of personality, infusing both characters with charisma and vulnerability.

This duo's assured portrayals, chemistry and impeccable timing anchor the production. Unsettling that anchor are missteps by Murphy, whose resume includes projects with Broadway veteran and "The Civil War" collaborator Frank Wildhorn.

Murphy's Broadway experience is as a lyricist, and "Gods of Autumn" shows that those skills don't easily translate to playwriting. The heightened language common in lyrics sounds pretentious when spoken. The play's most irritating character, The Other Part (Holden Hansen), illustrates this throughout.

The Other Part, a physical manifestation of the argumentative voices in our minds, flits from one character to another, providing lazy exposition and interruptive commentary before explaining his role to the audience in a supremely irritating monologue near play's end (one of several infractions of theater's "show, don't tell" rule).

Dorothy Recasner Brown is saddled with the one-dimensional role of an odious women's magazine editor -- callous, work-obsessed, hypocritical and all the clichéd traits that typically come with such a character. Murphy tries to redeem her with a last-minute speech, but it's too late. Her character also talks a lot on a cell phone, a device that seldom works on stage and bodes especially poorly for "Gods" when used at play's start.

Gillie Conklin does a serviceable job in multiple sketchy roles. And other actors contribute hospital intercom voices that make a cheap attempt at humor by, among other things, poking fun at the prevalence of Indians in medicine.

"Gods" spends much time contemplating the existence of God. It's a stage-worthy question. But for now, Murphy would do well to seek guidance from creators of a different sort.