STAGE REVIEW : TRACKING ‘CAT’S-PAW’: SOME ELUSIVE PRINTS

SAN DIEGO — Who is a terrorist? What is a terrorist?

Those are only two of the knotty issues broached in William Mastrosimone’s “Cat’s-Paw,” which opened over the weekend at the Old Globe.

There are several dynamics at work here. The first crucially hovers over a definition of terrorism--the outlawed kind versus the legalized variety. The second dwells on the interaction between camera and event--or the validation of an act of terror by the effect of television upon it. And the third examines just who is temperamentally capable of committing acts of violence against the innocent.

Provocative items all, and more skillfully interwoven in their presentation than dissected here.

This Old Globe production of Mastrosimone’s latest play is something of a rarity: an import, brought in from the Seattle Repertory Theatre and presented in association with it as a replacement for the scrapped “Romance Language.”

Wisely, it is being performed in the Cassius Carter Centre Stage, where the raging war of words--attack and counterattack--has a better chance of pulling us into the verbal cross fire.

Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. The urban setting is unequivocally on target: a room in disarray that looks like a bunker (designers are Thomas Fichter and Alan K. Okazaki). Semiautomatic weapons, guns, grenades, pistols are everywhere. A table is in the center. Bottled water is crammed under an Army cot littered with boxes and bags. A dirty sink is in the corner, next to a shelf with angry-looking provisions. At the center table sits David Darling (Mark Jenkins), handcuffed.

From the moment Victor (John Procaccino) stalks into the room, the equation is clear: predator and prey. David is a hostage and Victor his keeper, chider, tormentor, benefactor. It’s a complicated relationship. What has the terrified David done? Why is he here?

Just now, David is being readied for a television interview. Along with the freshly pressed suit he’s suddenly allowed to wear again (no shoes, though, to ensure that the equilibrium remains slightly off), he is given an injection. What, asks David. Truth serum answers Victor. Why, we ask ourselves.

The reasons for this and some other things do not become clear, even as events unfold, which keeps “Cat’s-Paw” from growing as compelling as one might wish. Victor has at least one accomplice, Cathy (Amy Caton-Ford) and one real antagonist, the visiting television reporter Jessica Lyons (Kit Flanagan), hot for a story.

He is planning to use her, of course, but Mastrosimone nimbly turns the tables on Victor. We discover that Victor’s beef is with the Environmental Protection Agency--or is it? David is a small-time EPA official guilty of rubber-stamping documents sanctioning polluted waters for human consumption. But what of Victor’s failure, as a protester of the incident, to carry off his end of a pact of self-immolation that left his girlfriend dead? Who’s the terrorist? Who the coward? Who has any right to be righteous?

Curiously, that bit of interaction tends to further neutralize the role of reporter Lyons, who seems purely a device to bring out needed revelations. The issue of television as witness is explored minimally--as the agent provocateur of an irresistible urge to spill all.

Quite all is not spilt, and while some things are transparent and others overexplained, still others remain persistently murky and even awkward--none more than the references to another accomplice named Martin, who blew himself up, or was blown up, that morning in a car-bombing.

The production’s tension stems directly from Daniel Sullivan’s taut staging, from the aptly sinister and magnetic performance of Procaccino as the deranged Victor and from the profoundly affecting one by Jenkins as the terrorized David.

Caton-Ford and Flanagan have a harder time of it in more synthetic roles--the former because her character is as peripheral as it is insufficiently grounded in logic, the latter because she is so much a mouthpiece rather than a person of flesh, blood and fear.

In short, the finer balance that needs to be struck remains dramaturgically elusive. And while it’s easy to imagine an argument in defense of some imbalance, it has a defusing effect. Instead of keeping the audience on its toes, it keeps it at arm’s length, trying to figure out where this play might be going.

Not one to shy away from large subjects (“Extremities,” “Nanawatai”), perhaps Mastrosimone has simply attempted to embrace too many issues here, failing to zero in enough on any of them.

With the exception of Christopher Hampton’s memorable “Savages,” we were overdue for a play about terrorism. With the surgical removal of one or two plot and philosophical strands, this one could fill the bill.

Performances at the Globe in Balboa Park run Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 7 p.m. with 2 p.m. matinees Saturday and Sunday (619-239-2255).