Edition: U.S. / Global

THEATER REVIEW; Radiance, Rebellion and Trust

Published: May 2, 1999

CONSIDER a distressing question facing the habitual theatergoer. Does a deadening production of a great living play deserve to be called valiant, or even ambitious, just because it's there?

Athol Fugard's radiant ''Road to Mecca'' is rendered a disservice by the director Margo Whitcomb in the pedestrian production at the Centenary Stage Company here. The play concerns a glowing friendship -- and its defining element, trust -- between Miss Helen, a radiant older woman with the soul of an artist, and Elsa, a young schoolteacher with a rebel's spirit.

Miss Helen (Frances Peter) is an apolitical character, unusual for a play Mr. Fugard wrote during apartheid. Elsa (Kristin Ketterer) is not. Without two impassioned performances, their first act confrontation can be long-winded. In this production, which amounts to hardly more than a flat recitation and is not quite up to the level of a staged reading, it is unbearable, or pretty near.

Miss Helen, in failing health, is frightened. Elsa speaks up for her resilience. Marius (J. C. Hoyt), a rigid minister, is trying to move Miss Helen to ''a Sunshine Home for the Aged'' and get her to sign her life away.

Given the attention centered on reconciliation and amnesty in the post-apartheid era, it is especially important to give pertinence and immediacy to the plays Mr. Fugard wrote during oppressive times, whether or not they deal overtly with atrocities -- and ''Mecca'' does, implicitly as well as metaphorically. Elsa, facing disciplinary action for speaking out on racial inequality, teaches in a ''coloured school.'' Miss Helen encourages her to tell ''little white lies'' for her own good.

The actors give line readings rather than performances; the setting is hardly the ''extraordinary room by virtue of the attempt to use as much light and color as is humanly possibly'' that Mr. Fugard described in the stage directions.

To the distressing question, the answer is: no way.


Cedntenary Stage Company

Centenary College, 400 Jefferson Street, Hackettstown

Through Saturday. Performances: today at 2:30 P.M.; Thursday at 7:30 P.M.; Friday and Saturday at 8 P.M.

(908) 979-0900

Photo: Frances Peter and J. C. Hoyt in ''The Road to Mecca.''