In his play "If Memory Serves," having its world premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, Jonathan Tolins takes a comedic look at the current issue of people supposedly remembering terrible things from their childhood that they have long suppressed in their memories.

It's a compelling subject for a drama, and Tolins evokes comedy from it by setting his play in Hollywood, in the world of television, movies, wheeler-dealer agents, gossip columns and fans' love-hate relationships with stars.

In the play, Brooke Adams is attractively convincing as Diane Barrow, who starred 20 years ago as everybody's favorite mom in a TV series that is still fondly remembered, especially since reruns are shown nightly. Although her career is stagnant, she has hopes of appearing in more dramatic roles, perhaps in a remake of "Mildred Pierce."

Her son Russell (Michael Landes) has left his graduate studies at New York University to return home to Hollywood and decide what he wants to do with his life. Visiting a coffee house where a friend (Pamela Segall Adlon) is a performance artist, he does a satirical performance piece in which he mockingly describes a miserable childhood, although his own childhood memories are happy.

Word of his performance gets around and gossip columnists have a field day with the possibility that Diane Barrow, TV's perfect mom, may have been an abusive mother in real life.

Russell is about to laugh this off when his sleazy father, (David Groh) shows up to confirm that yes, his mother did abuse him.

Confrontations with his mother and sessions with a psychiatrist (Paula Kelly) only confuse him more, and Tolins has fun depicting the double-dealing and hypocrisy that goes on in Hollywood power circles.

The play runs on a bit too long and takes too many twists before some kind of resolution occurs, and that resolution might be considered a bit too pat, but overall "If Memory Serves" is an enjoyable theater experience.

As directed by Leonard Foglia, Adams and Landes are strong and believable in their changing relationships.

Kelly does well both as the psychiatrist and as Barrow's former housekeeper. Steven Culp plays Barrow's current much younger lover as well as a former camp counselor; Adlon creates an interesting character as Russell's lesbian friend and Bill Brochtrup is warm and sympathetic as Barrow's gay secretary.

Marilyn Sokol creates two strong if cliched characterizations as a smarmy gossip columnist and Barrow's agent.

THEATER REVIEW

"If Memory Serves"

Where: The Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena.

Performances and tickets: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Through Oct. 25. $11.50-$42.50.

Information: (800) 233-3123.

Published 9/23/1998