Jul 16, 2004  |  By: PATRICK FOLLIARD  | COMMENTS     

“OH, THE INNOCENTS,” a musical written and directed by Ali Roth, Theater J’s artistic director, is a modern morality tale of temptation set in bohemian D.C., and wealthy suburban Potomac, Md.

Jeremy (Peter Wylie) and Betsy (Liz Mamana) play a nauseatingly idealistic, 20-something married couple living for their art and each other, or so it seems. By day Jeremy teaches piano to spoiled brats in Potomac while his singer/songwriter spouse edits uninteresting copy.

They’re happy to toil because at the end of the day, they retreat to a sacred sanctuary, their tiny apartment near Eastern Market where they work together on their music. Occasionally, they even book a gig in an Adams Morgan club, or the Vegas Lounge.

Out in Potomac, Alex (Lucy Newman-Williams), a student’s pitiable but hot middle-aged mother, wants to bed Jeremy. Whether genuinely interested or not, the decidedly hands-off mom is unrelenting. And while the sanctimonious Jeremy is ambivalent to her advances, Alex nails her quarry in the music room of her capacious home on one of his visits.

Despite a tedious zipper bit in which Jeremy is too afraid to do up the back of Alex’s little black cocktail dress that she’s slipped on for a night of fun (a Wizards’ event at the Four Seasons), the scenes between Alex and Jeremy are the best in the play.

This has a lot to do with local actor Newman-Williams. Even though she ought to resurface a lot longer in the second act, the pretty lesbian actor (who in this role brings to mind Annette Bening), fares very well as Alex. Newman-Williams has created a very sad and familiar (to me anyway) character.

JEREMY’S SELF-DEPRECATING best friend Josh (charming Eric Sutton) knows the intimate details of Jeremy and Betsy’s tepid personal life. When Josh, who has abandoned music for the corporate world, warns Betsy and Jeremy to beware of wolves at the door in the person of a record producer called Zev (nicely underplayed by Dan Via), he’s wasting his breath.

Betsy and Jeremy don’t need a lot of help from the outside to get into trouble and, ironically, Josh is right there, willing and able to assist. With Jeremy away in New York City for a jingle audition, Betsy goes on a date with Zev and falls into bed with Josh all in just one evening.

In writing a character like Betsy, Roth sets himself up for trouble. The audience needs to believe that she is an artist on the verge of making it really big.

Granted, it’s not that easy to cast a role that requires both a good actor and a fabulous singer able to dazzle us with Roth’s soft rock score. Mamana, like Wylie, is very convincing as an earnest, but confused young artist, though she’s not quite as plausible as the next Avril Lavigne.

Daniel Conway’s clever set includes panels that open to reveal Adams Morgan’s street scenes, and a close-up of an enormous Potomac home, nicely transporting the action in and out of the Beltway.

Susan Chiang’s costumes reveal a careful eye to D.C.’s socio/economic fashion detail, but there is really no excuse for Betsy’s collection of tacky sandals. She might be broke, but she’d go barefoot before slipping into those kicks.

By the show’s sort of awkward curtain call, all the characters’ issues appear to be neatly resolved, but somehow given the opportunity to misbehave, all of them would probably do it all again.

At almost two-and-a-half hours, “Oh, The Innocents,” is too long. By picking up the pace a bit and making a few cuts, it could easily make its point in much less time.