'CLEARING' SWEEPS AWAY ANY SUBTLETY.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

``Will you hold him, then?'' Irish born Madeleine (played by Denise Dillard) asks her fellow countryman Pierce Kinsellagh (Timothy O'Hare) before flinging her newborn son, Rafe, forward. It was already a scene of dramatic tension. Now Pierce, who viewed Madeleine's marriage to an Englishman as a betrayal, has to either catch the baby or let him fall. Seeing as how young Rafe will be a cultural pawn as events develop, you can bet your bippy Pierce will make the sure-handed choice.

What fever pitch melodramatics aren't already built into Helen Edmundson's play ``The Clearing'' are amply filled in by the actors in Robert O'Reilly's production at Burbank's Colony Theatre. Working with timely but overwrought material, O'Reilly directs with exclamation points and his cast follows where he leads. ``The Clearing'' isn't merely dark; it's dark!!

Whether ``The Clearing'' would benefit from a more subtle hand is debatable; this feels like the stuff of a historical soap opera even if it is grounded in real events. In Edmundson's story, Robert Preston (no, not the Music Man) has to draw domestic battle lines when the Oliver Cromwell-led government starts ridding Ireland of the Irish and Madeleine - a redhead, natch - won't sit still for injustice. She'll sacrifice, and she'll make her husband - the man she thought she knew - pay dearly.

Oh, sure, there's an utterly despicable government officer who's pulling the strings that are helping to split Preston (David Rose) and Madeleine asunder, but the real villain of this piece is a society so fueled by hate and distrust that it can permit and authorize wholesale ethnic cleansing. Given the recent news about life within the Taliban or even the complicated history of English-Irish relations, we should be hearing reverberations. But in ``The Clearing,'' it's hard to get past the fireworks - the pulsing veins and flung infants.

Although the action shifts from a manor house garden to the governor's office to the deck of a slave ship, Barbara Grill's gloomy set is a stone-dominated moors, which could easily house Shakespeare's ``Macbeth.'' It works fine for the scenes in which Madeleine's loyal servant Killaine (Faith Salie, nicely ethereal) is out communing with the spirits. Less so in more formal settings. A. Jeffrey Schoenberg's costumes are beautiful and appropriate.

The Colony rarely serves up a weak performance (although as last year's ``The Man Who Came to Dinner'' showed, occasional hamminess is appropriate for the company's menu). Dialect coach Joel Goldes has everybody sounding like they belong in this place and time. When not hitting the emotional power switch, Dillard finds some shades to the sometimes conflicted Madeleine. Secondary couple Blaise Messinger and Alison Shanks do better than creditable work as the Preston's unlucky friends, Solomon and Susaneh Winter.

As Sir Charles Sturman, the government officer who's pushing mass deportation, Chad Borden is a 17th century Snidely Whiplash. How much more interesting would Edmundson's play have been if this villain were a pencil-pushing bureaucrat, not a sniveling racist?

A better, deeper play than ``The Clearing'' answers that question.

``THE CLEARING''

Where: Colony Theatre Co., 555 N. Third St., Burbank

When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; through Nov. 18

Tickets: $25 to $28. Call [phone].

Our rating: Two stars

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David Rose and Denise Dillard star in Colony Theatre's Ireland drama, ``The Clearing.''