STAGE REVIEW : COCAINE AND CAUSALITY IN ‘DELIRIOUS’

A lot has already been written about “Delirious,” both good and bad. Now that the J. (for John) Bunzel play--a treatise on decadence and cocaine among the affluent young--has moved to the Matrix Theatre on Melrose Avenue, the reaction remains essentially the same: interesting if imperfect play; intriguing playwright--and an only slightly less powerful production.

Tracking a stressful all-night cocaine party at a Bel-Air mansion owned by the absent father of the host, “Delirious” is about a lot of things: first and foremost, the consuming importance of cocaine in these lives; second and more concealed, the why-when-how of the waste. That’s the part that gets muddled in the absence of a surer sense of craft.

Host Nick (the excellent Cyril O’Reilly) is a fundamentally good kid lost in his father’s millions. To solve any crisis, Dad offers money or things or opts to disappear. Need a job? Here’s an appointment with the head of a studio. Better look snappy, so choose one of three watches from Cartier’s; a man is known by the name-drop on his wrist. Someone bleed all over the couch? Replace it.

Bunzel, who performs in the play and is as young as the young people in it, understands them at gut level and has allowed that instinctual knowledge to guide his pen.

It’s a good way to write and a large part of the reason “Delirious” is so compelling. The portraits are mostly true and if the father, known diffidently as Mr. Richfield (Russell Johnson), sounds a bit like a composite parent, it’s because (a) he probably is, and (b) one of the things on Bunzel’s mind is expressing generational distance.

As long as the partygoers are knocking about the Richfield living room doing themselves and the furniture plenty of damage, the play has juice and a tremendous energy. It’s when it has to transcend the presentational and touch on causes that it stalls. We know why these kids are unhappy, callous, compulsive, indulgent and bent on self-destruction, but Bunzel doesn’t examine that enough.

The angle from which he attempts to, however, has an unexpected twist. While it predictably points a finger at elders who do alcohol the way their kids do coke, those elders--in this case the swinging dad--come off much shallower than the kids.

Richfield’s falling in with the party and its practices is a tacit extension of the cult of youth--and how ugly it becomes when practiced by the middle-aged. No wonder that when Nick reaches out, it’s Dad who can’t cope. Though the knowledge hardly helps, the child is father to this man.

Bunzel may not have the answers, but he at least suggests the questions, even if too perfunctorily. And there are stress points, even if Ron Link’s full-tilt direction keeps the audience so distracted that it’s easy to overlook them.

Disconnected scene transitions alert us to lapses in logic. Good actors--as most of these are--can cover for a play’s weaknesses and it’s only when Claudia Christian’s Didi gets too compulsive and twitchy or when Stogie Harrison’s Real Cool can’t live up to his name that we begin to see the loopholes.

Bunzel has starched the earlier sentimentality of the second act, and Hart’s attempted suicide (beautifully played by an adeptly manic Antony Alda) feels like a more dangerous brush with death.

Most missed in this move to the Matrix from the Pilot Theatre is the night view of Los Angeles as seen from the Hollywood Hills. It was a stunning part of the Gerry Hariton/Vicki Baral set, lost when they had to squeeze the Richfield living room into the narrower Matrix stage. With the sliding glass went the play’s major virtue: its strongly identifiable local identity.

“Delirious” continues indefinitely on Melrose Avenue where it rightfully belongs. Its soulmates walk that street and one doesn’t have to be over 40 to be a senior member of the audience. Performances are Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 7 and 10 p.m. (213-852-1445).