Performances Elevate Familiar Family Drama

In “On an Average Day” at the Coast Playhouse, playwright-director John Kolvenbach retraces Sam Shepard’s footprints down a well-worn path.

Like Shepard so many times before him, Kolvenbach travels into the lower depths of a savagely dysfunctional family relationship--in this case, the interaction between two adult brothers whose lives have been variously blighted by their father’s early abandonment. That downward journey never takes us to Shepard’s surreal heights, but Kolvenbach gets points for staging if not style.

Bob (Jonathan Higgins) is a twitchy, unwashed down-and-outer who is down to his last dollar and on his last nerve. Currently on trial for attempted murder, Bob was abandoned by his father at age 7, then raised by his older brother Jack (John Robinson). When Bob was 15, the 22-year-old Jack took off for parts unknown, leaving Bob to lapse into delusion and isolation. Now, 15 years later, Jack returns for a visit. In contrast to his bizarre and paranoiac brother, Jack is a paragon of normalcy. But under the laconic exterior, Jack is also hurting, staggering under the burden of guilt that he has carried all these years and determined to stop the cycle of dysfunction once and for all.

This first U.S. production features the same actors who premiered the play at last summer’s Toronto Fringe Festival. Higgins has the showier role, and he makes the manic Bob hilarious and pitiable by turns. As the more rational Jack, Robinson only comes to the emotional fore during the play’s latter scenes, when he explodes into long-subdued despair.

Kolvenbach compromises the cryptic tone of his piece by layering on various inorganic plot “twists,” including a fizzling subplot that doesn’t seem to warrant the towering emotions it engenders and elements of false suspense that smack of contrivance and melodrama. Still, under Kolvenbach’s sure directorial hand, Higgins and Robinson deliver solid performances that make the overall endeavor worthwhile.

* “On an Average Day,” Coast Playhouse, 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 4. $17.50. (323) 655-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.