NCT’s ‘Nevada’ explores Silver State dreams

It doesn’t make much sense, but David Kranes’ play “Nevada” has never been produced in Nevada.

That is, until now.

Kranes’ “Nevada” finally finds a home on a Silver State stage, thanks to Nevada Conservatory Theatre, which launches a seven-performance run Friday at UNLV’s Judy Bayley Theatre.

It’s been a long journey for “Nevada” to reach its namesake state.

After all, its first professional production took place 37 years ago at the Los Angeles Music Center’s Tony-winning Mark Taper Forum, where the late John Ritter (just beginning his starring role on TV’s “Three’s Company”) was “wonderfully nuanced” in one of the leading roles, Kranes recalls.

So what took so long?

Kranes lists a few reasons, including the fact that “it’s a large-cast play,” with nine characters — including one identified only as the “Oldest Man in Nevada” — and an elaborate set, including a full casino.

Besides, “compared to most states, there aren’t a lot of ‘regional’ theaters in the state of Nevada,” Kranes points out in an email interview.

Little wonder, then, that Kranes “was thrilled at the prospect of ‘Nevada’ in Nevada.”

The award-winning writer has written more than 40 plays and several novels, short stories and screenplays. He also founded Utah’s Sundance Playwrights’ Lab, where he spent 14 years nurturing such works as Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Angels in America.”

A former professor of English at the University of Utah, Kranes has taught playwriting workshops at UNLV, where NCT serves as the graduate theater training program.

So when Brackley Frayer, who chairs UNLV’s theater department, and faculty member Michael Lugering approached Kranes about staging one of his plays in connection with Nevada’s upcoming sesquicentennial, “I had a couple of plays which they considered,” Kranes notes. (The losing candidate? “Cantrell,” whose title character is a hit man.)

Based in Salt Lake City, Kranes has written extensively about Nevada — not only for the stage, but also for the page. He’s currently seeking a publisher for a detective novel set in Las Vegas. And his award-winning short story collection “Low Tide in the Desert” focuses solely on the Silver State, from the urban wilds of Las Vegas and Reno to the smaller but equally evocative settings of Jackpot and Battle Mountain.

“Much of my work — both in fiction and on stage — has a dream/myth quality about it,” Kranes explains. “So my work, often, is ‘bordertown.’ Things happen in them that could happen, possibly, but which are on the edge.”

In “Nevada,” that edge runs through the Golden Dude, a casino that’s the kind of place “where nobody wants to stay — including the people who work there,” observes director Donald Brenner, who previously directed Kranes’ Idaho-set “House, Bridge, Fountain, Gate.”

As for “Nevada,” the play focuses on “people’s dreams and hopes, their past and present, colliding at the same time,” the director explains. They’re “people who want to be their best self. It’s a dream we all have, being that person we know we can be.”

Among the dreamers:

Gene (played by Jess Bourque), who’s “a young man who has a hard time with commitment,” according to Brenner; Logan (Sam Cordes), a “sweet-natured” guy who’s “got this surfer boy thing going on,” along with a “con man” quality; and Shelly (Jasmine Mathews), who’s “in love with Gene” and “trying to make Gene come to terms with his journey.”

Kranes describes the play as “serious but with comic ripples,” admitting that “I find it very hard to talk/think about my work thematically. I just try to write the people in the place. I’m much happier when others suggest what my work is ‘about.’ ”

Brenner has no such trouble characterizing Kranes’ work.

“David’s writing is sort of a combination of Sam Shepard, Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams,” he comments, citing three legendary Pulitzer Prize-winners.

“But he’s very much a genre all his own,” with “the grittiness of Sam Shepard, the intelligence of Edward Albee and the beautiful lyricism — almost poetry — of Tennessee Williams.”

No wonder staging “Nevada” ranks as “such a challenge,” Brenner admits. “Combining them is really the trick.”

One that UNLV’s graduate theater students, on and off stage, are quite capable of meeting, according to the New York-based director.

“I was astounded at the level of talent at the auditions,” Brenner says, noting that “the acting talent I’ve found is right up there with New York talent.”

And NCT’s “Nevada” designers — master’s degree candidates Elizabeth LaRouche (costumes), Josh Lentner (lighting) and Ian Mangum (sets) — have managed to master what Brenner calls “a very difficult play to design.”

That’s because “it’s a memory play, set in the ’70s — a tricky thing,” he says. “You don’t want it to look cartoony or campy.” The challenge is “creating that authenticity — but creating it in a lyrical way,” so audiences know the action has already occurred, and is being conjured through the filter of memory.

As Kranes explains, “I like the notion of characters who have come from somewhere and hope to be going somewhere else and (in their own minds at least) are ‘stopping off’ … before going to a ‘better place.’ ”

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.