Leslie Hicks, Brian Kerwin, Austin Highsmith, and Edward Edwards in "The Tragedy of the Commons"; Photo by Agnes Magyari

Two small theaters in Santa Monica are offering plays with big themes that grow out of very intimate, detailed situations. Jane Fonda in the Court of Public Opinion, at the Edgemar Center, is likely to attract attention simply because of its title character, so first I’d like to discuss The Tragedy of the Commons at Ruskin Group Theatre.

Any play with a title that begins with the word tragedy probably needs an extra boost in reaching audiences. Maybe it will help to know that Stephen Metcalfe’s play isn’t a tragedy in the strict sense, although it veers within striking distance.

It’s about a prickly ex-teacher named Dakin Adams (Brian Kerwin) who wants to alert the world – via his blog — to the environmental destruction that was foreseen by sociobiologist Garrett Hardin. As Dakin sums up Hardin’s point, “a shared resource is invariably ruined by uncontrolled use.” This is “the tragedy of the commons,” Hardin wrote in 1968.

But our well-intentioned, near-tragic hero is brought down by his obsession with preserving one tiny chunk of the world – and not technically even part of “the commons.” It’s the view from his own home’s terrace, which is threatened when the neighbor (Edward Edwards) down the hill decides to move. Suddenly Dakin realizes that a buyer might tear the neighbor’s house and then build a much taller, bigger house in its place.

Although the locale of the play isn’t specified, Metcalfe lives in La Jolla and reportedly encountered such a situation in his own life. The play was first produced earlier this year in San Diego, but with all the hillside and ocean-view homes in the LA area, it’s a fitting topic for this area as well.

Brian Kerwin and Austin Highsmith

With advice from his attorney daughter (Austin Highsmith alternating with Rachel Noll), who has her own issues with her father, Dakin initially tries to buy the rights to the airspace over his neighbor’s house but inadvertently torpedoes his own plan by misbehaving in the negotiations.

Meanwhile, his wife Macy (Leslie Hicks) tries to be helpful to her husband, but she would rather see the rest of the world than to remain tied to this particular view – and to the isolating cyberspace in which her husband increasingly lives.

Floating within the margins of Dakin’s consciousness is his late son Spencer (Lane Compton), who was killed on 9/11. From his omniscient position within Dakin’s brain, Spencer is not exactly angelic – he’s a smug quipster who doesn’t hesitate to deflate Dakin at every opportunity. Lear’s clown, perhaps?

For that matter, Spencer’s not unlike the developer (I saw understudy Josh Drennen, in for Jeffrey Stubblefield) who finally buys the neighbor’s house – and proceeds to do everything Dakin had feared.

I’ve read other comparisons of this play to works by Miller and Ibsen, and I myself mentioned  Lear two paragraphs ago, but in fact, as my wife pointed out, the classic it most resembles is The Cherry Orchard. The sounds of the demolition of the neighbor’s house by the younger, wealthier developer are equivalent to the sounds of the axes on the trees in Chekhov’s classic. And they likewise portend not just the fate of one house but rather that of a fading generation that sees a newer and less comprehensible world rising up on all sides.

Jeffrey Stubblefield and Brian Kerwin

This isn’t to say that Metcalfe’s new play is on the Cherry Orchard level, at least not yet.   The role of Macy is underwritten. Nowadays, a woman who’s so thirsty for real-world connections with other people and places would probably find something that’s more exciting than walking the dogs (in a public park, AKA “the commons,” where she has been fined for releasing the dogs from their leashes), playing bridge and tending the garden.

Also, the ending of the play prevents it from reaching full-fledged tragedy status. I’m talking about what happens literally on the final page of the script, so the critic’s code prevents me from describing it in any detail. But while it might momentarily make the audience feel better, it simultaneously reduces the scale and the impact of the play.

The play has a few flaws, but I found none in director Dave Florek’s cast. While they’re all terrific, it’s Kerwin who truly finds the tragedy within the man as well as well as within the commons.

The intimacy of the Ruskin helps Florek and company delineate the play’s many nuances. But every midsize and larger nonprofit company within LA, OC and VC should be looking at this production as something that could conceivably move up to a production with greater design resources, not to mention better pay for everyone in it.  With one more rewrite and a somewhat more lavish budget, this could become a great play.

James Giordano, Steve Voldseth and Anne Archer in "Jane Fonda in the Court of Public Opinion"

I don’t think that Jane Fonda and the Court of Public Opinion will ever be a great play, but it is a gripping round of docudrama. It’s based on a meeting between Fonda and a group of Vietnam veterans who were among those protesting the filming of one of Fonda’s movies in 1988 because of her role as an antiwar activist in the early ‘70s.

Fonda (Anne Archer) is locked in a room at a church with seven angry men – most of them Vietnam vets but a couple from previous wars — and one moderating clergyman. The church hardly proves to be a serene sanctuary. While the men stop short of physical violence, the verbal jabs are relentless – or at least they would have been if writer/director Terry Jastrow (and co-direcor Michelle Danner) didn’t break into the argument with frequent video clips from the era, some of them focusing on the real Fonda, and with occasional monologues by Archer’s Fonda as she re-creates moments from speeches she gave during her days of dissent.

While the men begin the play as more or less a united front of Fonda-bashers, differences among their viewpoints gradually emerge. Fonda remains in steely self-control throughout most of the meeting, but occasionally one of the men’s true stories will bring a trace of tears to her eyes, and she eventually asks forgiveness for one limited chapter of her activism – when she allowed herself to be photographed with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. That concession serves to soften some of the men as well – but not all of them. They don’t unite to sing “Kum-ba-yah” at play’s end.

Anne Archer and Terrence Beasor

In a program note, Jastrow writes that at the actual 1988 meeting, “there were no recording devices present. The play is in no way an attempt to re-enact what happened, or to specifically portray any of the vets who attended (almost all refused to cooperate with this project).” But while the meeting may not be represented with complete accuracy, Jastrow’s script certainly sounds fair to most of its participants. In pre-show comments to the audience, Jastrow also vouched for the exhaustiveness of his research about what Fonda actually did or didn’t do while she was in Vietnam.

At any rate, the usefulness of the play goes beyond its surface drama and its historical lessons. Not only is the US still involved in controversial wars, but Americans are still arguing with each other on just about every matter of public policy. At times the differences seem irreconcilable, but Jastrow’s production suggests that while venting may not cure, it might help cauterize the wound over time.

The Tragedy of the Commons, Ruskin Group Theatre, 3000 Airport Road, Santa Monica. Fri-Sat 8 pm, Sun 2 pm. Closes Nov 6. 310-397-3244. www.ruskingrouptheatre.com

***All The Tragedy of the Commons production photos by Agnes Magyari

Jane Fonda and the Court of Public Opinion, Edgemar Center for the Arts, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica. Thur-Sat 8 pm; Sun 7 pm, except this Sunday Oct 23, 2 pm. Dark Thanksgiving weekend. Closes Dec. 4. 310-392-7327. www.edgemarcenter.org.

***All Jane Fonda and the Court of Public Opinion production photos by Ed Krieger

I GUESS THERE JUST WASN’T ANYTHING GOING ON IN LA THEATER THIS WEEK: The LA Times “theater” article in last Sunday’s Arts & Books section was about the comeback of former movie star Steve Guttenberg — he’s doing a Woody Allen one-act play in New York, where he now lives.