STAGE REVIEW : ‘Child’s Play’ Is Devilish at the Coast

Robert Marasco’s “Child’s Play,” revived at the Coast Playhouse, is one of the most conservative plays ever produced in the environs of West Hollywood. It’s the sort of play that Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius might have written, or at least applauded.

The implications of “Child’s Play” cannot be discussed in any detail in a review. It’s a thriller, and we can’t give away the ending. Political considerations aside, though, the ending is a mess--the motivations for the central actions of the play remain baffling.

Getting to that ending can be fun, however. When the red lights go up and the sound track begins to hum at the Coast (Michael Gilliam and Jon Gottlieb designed lighting and sound, respectively), you can feel the chill, especially when the zombie boys who make up the student body at St. Charles’ School begin emerging from the wings, looking grim and sallow.

These beastly adolescents have fallen into the habit of mutilating each other, and the teachers don’t know what to do. Is the brutally harsh Latin and Greek teacher (William Atherton) to blame? Or is it the fault of the lenient, just-one-of-the-guys English teacher (Gregory Harrison)?

Or--as the Church Lady on “Saturday Night Live” might ask--could it be . . . Satan ?

The one actor who manages to transcend the hocus-pocus of the script is Atherton. He speaks with a sepulchral voice that occasionally rises to a note of bitter indignation but then gradually subsides back into the grave. He has a spectral look about him, but he also has the most human moment in the play, when his grief suddenly begins to overwhelm his composure.

Harrison is too young to play a man who’s described in the stage directions as being in his late 50s. The script has been altered accordingly; we’re told he has taught here for 16 years rather than 30. But the man’s actions make a bit more sense in the original. Harrison navigates the first few scenes well enough, but the rest of the play is beyond him.

As the youngest teacher, barely out of St. Charles himself, Brian McNamara outlines a troubled soul’s shifting loyalties with admirable precision. Lou Liberatore’s Father Penny is amusingly burned-out. Ian Abercrombie and Lawrence Lott mark time as the school’s administrators.

Tom McLoughlin’s staging treats the play strictly as the scare show that it is, complete with a fairly spooky neo-Gothic set designed by Deborah Raymond and Dorian Vernacchio.

At 8325 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 7 and 9:30 p.m., Sundays at 3 and 7 p.m., through March 4. Tickets: $20-$25; (213) 650-8507.