'FEDUNN' SET IN CATSKILLS, BUT DON'T EXPECT COMEDY.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

WITH ITS HEAVY symbolism, nearly impenetrable family dynamics and unspecific gloominess, the play ``Fedunn'' is a dirge masquerading as drama. That the play is the latest from the pen of Murray Mednick, one of the city's smarter and more daring playwrights, makes it worth consideration even if the experience is something of a head-scratcher.

Mednick, the founder of the esteemed Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival, had three of his works produced during an all-Mednick season at the reborn Padua Playwrights Productions. The last of those plays, ``Mrs. Feuerstein,'' was in many ways as distancing as ``Fedunn.'' Clearly we're expected to share in the characters' moral outrage, but exactly why isn't really made specific.

Which is not to say the work being done by Mitchell Ryan's cast isn't largely excellent. ``Fedunn'' depicts a family running an on-the-skids resort in the Catskills Mountains in 1948. The Royal Manor Hotel would appear to be a place of postcards, if not necessarily of memories. In fact, all of the characters on stage are the resort's proprietors. Mednick never gives us a guest.

Gary Randall's tender three-room set is a marvel of careful detail and fine research. Everything, from the displayed dishes on the armoire to the fallen leaves on the roof, feels warmly thought out. Clearly, Royal Manor is somebody's home. That the venue never welcomes anyone outside the Silverman family - audience included - is the playwright's fault, not the production's.

Of course, distance can happen when your play's conscience spends most of the first act in a coma. Holocaust survivor Tali (played by Maia Dansiger) lays in an upstairs bedroom, carefully watched over by her sister- in-law Eve (Elizabeth Tobias) and later her niece Gina (Bari Hochwald). Tali's husband Ray (Michael Pasternak) and his brother Pinnie (Joel Polis) run the Royal Manor, although their Hollywood-connected, deep-pocketed brother Leon (William Bumiller) is the real string-puller. And he's got his eye on the bottom line.

Wandering wraithlike through the resort is Fedunn (Zoltan), a Ukranian teenager - and a gentile - who delivers milk and who seems to bring Tali back to life. Everybody else in the resort considers Fedunn a petty thief.

``Fedunn'' the play consists of a series of loosely connected scenes. Gina confronts her bitterness; Ray and Pinnie try to hash out the resort's fate; a pair of waiters bait Fedunn. Even in 1948, the war and its accompanying loss never seem to be far from the Royal Manor's front door, with Tali and Gina the most significantly haunted.

Hochwald nicely embodies Gina's fragile elegance, particularly during a wonderful moment when the character, dancing to the strains of an off-stage saxophone, seems to become whole again. Evan Arnold brings a sweet dignity to Eve's brother Hesh, and as the three Silverman brothers, Polis, Bumiller and Pasternak all do effective work.

Yet Mednick and director Ryan seem to be having difficulty locating ``Fedunn's'' heartbeat. The work is not treated, strictly speaking, as a nostalgic memory play. The characters could people the works of Chekhov if the playwright could make their bitterness more immediate and compelling.

FEDUNN - Two and one half stars

Where: Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday; through Oct. 13.

Tickets: $25. Call [phone].

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Photo:

(1 -- 2) Above, Matt Gottlieb, left, Maia Dansiger and Bari Hochwald in ``Fedunn.'' At right, Travis Michael Holder and Hochwald.