'SEVENTH MONARCH' NOT READY TO RULE.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

GOOD ACTING may not necessarily trump clumsy writing, but it certainly staves off a play's ``Hey, wait a minute!'' effect - i.e., the moment when the viewer starts to add up the pieces and realize they don't fit.

``The Seventh Monarch,'' a new play by an acclaimed playwright at the red-hot Road Theatre Company, isn't exactly a con job, but it's no masterpiece either. The production's world premiere at the Road contains a brave and very interesting performance by Tamara Zook; an equally smart turn by Taylor Gilbert (in a role that brings new meaning to the word ``contrivance''); and all of the technical wizardry we've come to expect from company regulars like Robert L. Smith (the production's lighting designer), David B. Marling (sound) and Desma Murphy (set).

Yes, the production is visually dazzling, and the actors are so eager to send Jim Henry's dialogue in play that, on a recent Sunday evening performance, they were fluffing lines left and right. Small-scale theater doesn't get more arresting than what the Road does on a routine basis.

But after a riveting first act, ``The Seventh Monarch'' quickly implodes under the weight of its own contrivances. The play could easily lose its entire male cast (or, in the case of director Deborah LaVine's production, cast them with better actors).

Our scene is decked, floor to top, in bundles of newspapers, piled to the ceiling to form pillars and trees. Every crossword puzzle in every paper, we are later informed, has been completed to perfection. Our heroine, a 46-year-old mastermind named Miriam Hemmerick, is obsessed by the space program. Is she ever.

Miriam has a photographic memory that she accesses by tapping the side of her head and carriage-returning her eyes in rapid succession. She is terrified of the number 43, wears a space helmet, subsists on Tang and pot pies and generally behaves like what most people would label a barking lunatic. Zook plays brainy and needy with equal conviction, and she doesn't soft-pedal Miriam's eccentricity, even when Henry writes the character into victim mode. Miriam is a part which, I suspect, many an actress will covet and which several actresses will overplay. Not Zook. She's remarkable.

Into Miriam's house comes Social Security officer Raina Briar (Gilbert), a character who - conveniently - is a former psychologist and whose scarred past dovetails way too fluidly with Miriam's present. Miriam has signed her parents' last three Social Security checks with ``the beep, beep, beep baby'' (she was born on the day Sputnik went into orbit) instead of her name, prompting an investigation.

When it comes to pass that Miriam's parents are missing and there's dried blood on the carpet, a police detective (Ken Zavayna) and a politically opportunistic district attorney (Michael E. Dempsey) get involved. Also on hand is Miriam's court-appointed attorney (Lance Guest), who has eyes for Raina, and vice versa.

The play stays interesting as long as the action focuses on the interplay between the two women, although Raina's continued presence in Miriam's life doesn't make tons of sense. Miriam also gets a few rambling soliloquies where Henry seems to be making her into a present-day Ophelia.

There's a mystery or two to be solved - sort of - and a character or two to be vindicated. We're never entirely supposed to know what makes Miriam Hemmerick tick, only to accept that tick she does. That's sort of a cop-out until you realize that Miriam and her head full of trivia are the only things that make ``The Seventh Monarch'' worth watching.

Heaven knows whether the work will blast off or flame out with revisions ... or how it will play when it's Zook-less.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

THE SEVENTH MONARCH - Two stars

Where: The Road Theatre, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 16.

Tickets: $20. Call [phone].

In a nutshell: Two good performances. One silly play.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Taylor Gilbert, left, is the Social Security officer sent to unravel a mystery surrounding the cosmos-obsessed Miriam (Tamara Zook) in the Road Theatre's production of ``The Seventh Monarch.''