The tyranny of property and one's next-door neighbor provides the dramatic fodder for Stephen Metcalfe's latest play, The Tragedy of the Commons, now on tap in a superlative production at Ruskin Group Theater. Metcalfe, author of such previous works as Emily and Strange Snow,zeroes in on a long-married couple, Dakin and Macy Adams (the estimable Brian Kerwin and Leslie Hicks), whose fragile relationship is put to the test when they learn that their neighbor Carl (Edward Edwards) has put his house up for sale. If the buyer should build a second story, their beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean will be blocked.
Macy, still hurting from the death of their son in NYC on 9/11, is not up for a battle, but Dakin's sense of outrage -- and his many demons -- won't allow him to back off. Enlisting the help of his attorney daughter (Austin Highsmith), he fights tooth and nail to keep the sale from happening, only to taste defeat.
Things get even worse when the new owner (Jeffery Stubblefield) moves in and proves to be every bit as prickly and contentious as Dakin is. It's all-out war on the bluffs after that, with a take-no-prisoners ethic. Dakin, an embittered history teacher who was coerced into taking early retirement, wages a noble but lonely, doomed fight against the tyranny of property, realizing too late that the big loser in all this is his marriage.
The play's title is taken from a phrase first coined by socio-biologist Garret Hardin, who said that "a shared resource is inevitably ruined by uncontrolled use." There is something tragic about the play's theme -- what it takes to survive the dog-eat-dog 21st century -- but Metcalfe is able to write with humor much of the time: black humor, of course.
The playwright's story occasionally takes questionable plot turns, and his use of the family's dead son (Lane Compton) as a commentator on the action is a cliche and a mistake, but that still doesn't ruin the night's many powerful and moving moments, especially thanks to the outstanding work by the ensemble and by director Dave Florek,
