CATSKILL — This is the sort of talent Bridge Street Theatre attracts: Lusia Strus, one half of the company’s new two-hander production, “Bakersfield Mist,” was notified as the show was about to open that she’s been cast opposite Jude Law in a major but unnamed streaming series and must fly to Europe next weekend.
To accommodate her, Bridge Street rescheduled its April 25 matinee to the prior afternoon, meaning audiences have one less day but no fewer opportunities to see Strus’s gale-force performance as Maude, a recently fired, 50-something bartender living in a trailer park in present-day California. She has little company besides a case of Jack Daniel’s she took from her former employer as “severance pay,” a bunch of kitschy, thrift-store paintings that she likes — a dog dressed as a pirate, a cat smoking a cigarette, a clown — and one she considers ugly but believes to be a lost work by Jackson Pollock that could fetch tens of millions.
The arrival of a snooty art expert, Lionel (Conan McCarty), sent by a foundation to assess the drip painting’s authenticity, sets up a fast, funny 80 minutes of zingy dialogue, progressive intoxication and examinations no less heady than the value and meaning we place on expertise and even art itself.
First produced in 2011 by the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles, “Bakersfield Mist” was written by the Fountain’s co-founder Stephen Sachs, who has 17 other plays to his credit. It forms the third corner of an informal triumvirate with “Red,” John Logan’s two-character 2009 play about abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, and Yasmina Reza’s widely produced “Art,” from 1994, in which three friends argue over the merit of an all-white painting.
Less effete than “Art” and not as brainy but just as passionate as “Red,” Sachs’ play has something lacking in the earlier two: a female character. She’s loud, delivering both her first and final lines as bellows out the front door of her trailer, well-worn by life and possessed of raw, bruised wisdom. It makes her a surprisingly able foil for Lionel, who has impeccable education, credentials and a certitude in his opinions that is perhaps in need of a good rattling.
Sachs, through Maude, has clever fun doing so. And while the broad outlines of the play seem predictable — of course they’ll find some common ground, of course they’ll learn from each other, of course his bow tie will come undone — the script turns corners you didn’t know were there, and the lines give the actors abundant meat to showily chew on and context with which to deepen their characters.
While Maude is the more arresting role, in which Kathleen Turner was no doubt perfectly cast for the London production, Lionel has his own expansive development, from droll one-liners to a monologue that starts with him being captivated by his first Picasso to a frenzied acting out of how Pollock made one of his action paintings. (The title of the play alludes to Pollock’s “Lavender Mist.”)
In charge of all of this is Mark Perry, the interim (and likely incoming) artistic director of Bridge Street Theatre, who directed the production, designed the expertly dressed set and designed the sound. Lighting is by Bridge Street’s co-founder and emeritus co-founder John Sowle.
Perry created an environment in which his actors can excel, illuminating moments as tiny as a glance and as calamitous as an opera’s mad scene. Near the end of Friday’s performance, Maude’s violent slamming of her front door knocked off a piece of wall molding. Maude flung it aside in a moment so real that you couldn’t tell whether it was meant to happen or that Strus, completely inhabiting the character, didn’t have to think about how Maude would respond.