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(Enlarge) Kate McKenna as Faith, left, joins with Dr. Luvitz (Will Amland), right, in calming the anxieties of Michael Zemarel in "The Ape on the Church Steps," one of the premieres at the 2009 Baltimore Playwrights Festival, continuing via the Theatrical Mining Company through Aug. 30 at the College of Notre Dame. (Photo by Philip Laubner)

A family tragedy years earlier has left lasting psychological scars in J.M. Dinson's "The Ape on the Church Steps." Indeed, this Baltimore Playwrights Festival entry takes place in a psychiatric hospital. The Theatrical Mining Company production soon makes clear, however, that the psychological jargon is heading down a more spiritual path.

Although Dinson's play tends to be thematically heavy, its intensity makes for a nice tight fit in the snug performance space it occupies at the College of Notre Dame. It's often just a doctor, patient and you confronting the lingering damage done by that family tragedy.

Simple staging is the best approach to such a literally confining drama. Director Barry Feinstein relies on basic blocking for the two- or three-character conversations in the play's many short scenes; and it's played out against a bluntly effective set design by Darla Luke that mostly consists of the stage floor painted with an ecumenical assortment of religious and astrological symbols, and the backing wall painted with a swirling astral design. Such a setting announces that conventional psychological analysis is just the springboard for a metaphysical journey.

The middle-aged man who has been a patient in this hospital for eight years, Arthur Easy Sr. (Steve Lichtenstein), has not had it easy. He emphatically refuses to see his wife and son, goes through the motions of talking with the bureaucratically uptight Dr. Luvitz (Will Amland), and at least opens up a little with a nurturing art therapist, Faith (Kate McKenna).

There is another crucial relationship in this mental patient's life. He has an imaginary Special Friend (Marc Stevens alternating with Tyrone Requer), whose exact identity is best left for you to discover on your own. Suffice it to say that Arthur's response to the family tragedy has taken his ruminations in a religious direction.

Arthur's wife, Rose (Babs Dentz), has taken refuge in New Age psychobabble. Their son, Arthur Jr. (Michael Zemarel), is a recent college graduate who raises the simmering tension to a boil when he insists upon seeing the father who resolutely refuses to see him.

The playwright certainly has a viable dramatic premise here, and he's able to escalate the conflicts between the family and hospital staff in such a way that all the shouting is fully justified in theatrical terms. It's also to his credit that he finds a few humorous motifs to lighten the ponderous material.

However, the play perhaps inevitably feels weighted down by the psychological and ultimately theological issues it tackles. The conversations between Arthur Easy Sr. and the Special Friend only he can see, for instance, seem like the arch merger of the lightweight "Harvey" with more ambitiously metaphysical works by the likes of Shaw and Dostoevsky.

Arthur Easy Jr.'s worries about his own mental health are skillfully described, and yet he moves into such an extreme crisis mode that it also feels like the playwright forcing the action to achieve his thematic agenda.

Although the play is anything but subtle, it does have some subtle and even graceful bits of psychological portraiture. Likewise, the cast is generally able to balance its melodramatic outbursts with glimmers of more nuanced behavior.

If the script weren't so relentlessly schematic, these human lives could be presented with more complexity. The big spiritual issues would still be present, but within the context of troubled lives that encompass more than debate points.

All the right dramatic elements are percolating in this overwrought script, so it's just a matter of faithfully believing that the physical reality of these lives is a sufficiently solid foundation for the playwright's metaphysical observations.

"The Ape on the Church Steps" runs through Aug. 30 in LeClerc Hall at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, at 4701 N. Charles St., in Baltimore. Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $13 Friday and Saturday, 2 for 1 Sunday (except closing night), and pay what you can Thursday. Call 410-982-6979 or go to www.originalplays.com/tmc.

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