By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Stones in His Pocket can be a tour de force for two actors who play the roles of more than a dozen characters on the set of a would-be Hollywood blockbuster filming on location in the back-of-beyond in County Kerry, Ireland.

What gives it some added ooomph is that, unlike the frenzied wackiness of the Greater Tuna series, say, when two actors race on and offstage in split-second costume changes to higher and higher hilarity, Stones actually has something on its mind. Nothing too big, just some blah-blah about the callowness of the film industry (duh) and the responsibility we bear each other - maybe to indulge in small kindnesses rather than unthinking cruelties.

Stones is getting its area premiere in a pleasant but less than stellar production at Ensemble Theatre through May 16.

Some of the trouble can likely be assigned to the theater's always-short rehearsal period. Usually opening nights feel like a preview and shows find their stride a few performances into the run.

But a lot of what's wrong with Stones is probably going to stay wrong, and that can be assigned to director Michael Murray (returning to Cincinnati for the first time in 20 years after a decade as artistic director of Playhouse in the Park in the mid-'70s and '80s.)

Derry Woodhouse and Chris Clavelli play extras Charlie and Jake, respectively, anchoring the action as they each slip into a variety of other characters, including the high-strung female star, a young drug addict, the last remaining extra from John Wayne's Quiet Man, a tightly wound production assistant and sundry others.

The action plays out on a rural-looking stage floor, all dried browns, with a celluloid sky behind and a pair of squat stools and a large wooden box as the only props. It's Brian Mehring's 50th design for ETC and again demonstrates his value to the company.

On opening night, Woodhouse and Clavelli proved themselves able, but there was almost no emotional connect through the course of the first act. It never looked like anything other than work.

Murray goes for the broadest possible interpretations, and that didn't help. Clavelli spends a lot of time as assistant Aisling, and everybody uses the "she" word, but the way he plays it is gay-gay-gay stereotype, right down to the little gazelle-leaps. Woodhouse is no better at playing female. He plays the insecure star (who makes a play for Jake because she wants to study his authentic dialect) with a lot of lip puckering and hair-flipping, but he chickens out and never makes it really sexy, which would have been funnier.

Playwright Marie Jones has put an issue of loss at the center of the script, which demands that Murray balance silly with the serious and find the tone and the timing to make it work.

The actors are better in the second act when they face the aftermath of tragedy. Someone has died and, since everyone is related to everyone else in an Irish village, the locals want to attend the funeral while the film company, behind budget, wants to soldier on.

That makes the movie folks the villains, and the playwright indulges in a moderate swipe at American commercialism that probably plays better in Ireland and Great Britain than it does here.

But Murray and his performers haven't laid the groundwork so that we believe any of it matters, or that it's anything more than an acting exercise.

Stones won the opening night audience over with a crazed bow to Riverdance, but what could have epic proportions is just a two-man show.

Stones in His Pockets, through May 16, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 421-3555.