STAGE WEST: "All the Men Who've Frightened Me" at La Jolla Playhouse

Ty (Hennessey Winkler, far right) faces off against his ghosts in "All the Men Who've Frightened Me." Photo by Rich Soublet II

            Parenting is hard. Some people aren’t meant to be parents. Parents can make mistakes. BIG mistakes.
             Playwright Noah Diaz’s “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” adds little new to those realities but it tries – and tries hard – by creating a reality of its own that demands we suspend belief for two hours, that we accept in the grand pursuit of insight the unlikely and the otherworldly.
            La Jolla Playhouse is staging the world premiere of Diaz’s “house drama,” as he calls it, four years after its incubation in the company’s DNA New Works Series. Then as now it’s being directed by Kat Yen, the Playhouse’s first directing fellow. For Yen, a onetime fellow graduate student of Diaz’s and a longtime collaborator with the playwright, “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” is the culmination of her Playhouse assignment.
            This is a reflection on parenthood that turns the likes of, say, filmmaker Ron Howard’s 1989 comedy “Parenthood,” or its slightly more serious sitcom adaptation 20 years later, upside down. Though sprinkled with humor, most of it exploited through the story’s outrageous and uncensored mother-in-law character, “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” takes itself very seriously. Its characters – an extended family and then some -- are either grimly unhappy, riddled with doubt, boozily cynical or prone to preachiness. Pretty much everyone’s favorite subject is himself or herself.
            At the outset, young marrieds Ty (Hennessey Winkler) and Nora (Kineta Kunutu) are in the process of moving into the family house given to Ty by his still-living mother (Dale Soules). Nora is in full-blown panic attack mode about what to do next and overly focused on acquiring the right lamps. Ty is calm and placating, though it’s obvious from the start that Nora doesn’t want to live in this handed-down home.
            This seemingly minor drama is very soon usurped by another, a lulu: Nora has an “inhospitable womb” and cannot give birth. Almost immediately – actually, it is immediately – Ty, a trans man who’s been taking regular T-treatments, volunteers to carry the baby himself. Believe it or not, THIS is more credible than most everything else in the play.
            There’s no real backstory about why Ty transitioned in the first place, so his decision poses more questions than it answers. He says he’s doing this for his wife – though Nora doesn’t warm to that affirmation. Part of the problem is that Ty and Nora are never shown in any genuine affectionate moments. They don’t seem like lovers. They don’t seem like loving husband and wife. They’re just … there.
            Until their sleep is interrupted one night by the arrival of three spectral visitors in the house. Actually three versions of the same spectral visitor. At the risk of a spoiler, let’s just say that these three have a direct familial tie to Ty. Before long, they’re accepted, unquestioned staples of the household, busy doing fix-up chores and renovation and making over the house that Nora says she wants instead of the one Ty’s brought her to.
            In the meantime, Ty is starting to show.
            Also on the scene as tangible, flesh-and-blood visitors are Ty’s sister Carrie (Keren Lugo), who’s pregnant herself by a husband she’d just as soon be rid of; and Ty’s and Carrie’s cursing and dipsomaniacal mom, Dale. The latter has a hate on for Nora and is regretting having given the house over to her and her son, though it’s not crystal clear why.
            Very little is crystal clear in “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me.” Its deliberate deconstruction of what most people consider “traditional parenthood” and its dabblings in magical realism obfuscate what Diaz has stated he wants to say about how the past is prologue for new parents, about belonging, about parenting in all its many facets, with its rewards and trials.
            Though he’s playing one of the least happy expectant fathers you’ll ever see, Winkler is the production’s quiet anchor as Ty. He evokes gentility and we have a sense he’ll do just fine as a parent, even with the legacy of a deserting, deadbeat dad in his personal history.
            Kunutu is charged with being unhappy or angry as Nora, making it difficult to be in her corner. Her character has some legitimate beefs, but she’s made to seem selfish or unreasonable for voicing them.
            Lugo and Soules have the showy, more comedic roles in “All the Men …”, though Carrie isn’t given enough to do and Mom Dale is practically a caricature.
            The three visitors, listed in the production program as First, Second and Third (Leonardo Romero, Armando Riesco and John Padilla respectively), are solid and likable and sneaky-wise for supposedly being collectively disreputable.
            Scenic designer Adam Rigg deserves plaudits for a split-level house interior that functions almost like a character itself as it’s changed and transformed over the course of the two-hour production. Every backdrop and cardboard box, each nook and cranny has a function, if not always to further the story than to at least keep the three spectral visitors in motion.
            One surprise to spill (sorry), though it wasn’t an especially welcome surprise: During a baby shower thrown for Ty the loud playing of the insipid 1972 hit single “Brandy” by Looking Glass (advance to Final Jeopardy if you knew the recording artists as I did). “Brandy, you’re a fine girl / what a good wife you would be …”
            Good grief.
            I’m not a parent myself, and I don’t pretend to know as actual parents do how it feels to raise a child, how to be responsible for someone else that way, or just to know you’re doing the right things. It’s a comfort, I guess, that in “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” the one character to have faith in is the self-sacrificing prospective parent who seems to have everything working against him.
            “All the Men Who’ve Frightened Me” runs through Oct. 12 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum.