'Yankee Tavern' a Pure delight

So a stranger walks into a bar ... and begins a slow, inevitable crumbling of the lives of the four characters in Pure Theatre's current production, "Yankee Tavern."

Randy Neale, with decades of theater experience in New York and regionally, immediately takes over the stage at the Circular Congregational Church as Ray, the quintessential radical conspiracy theorist.

With the perfect balance of crazy and enlightened, Neale plays one of those boors who doubts every word of every government agency, and yet is intelligent and articulate enough to seem to prove his points.

His expository opening monologue falls on deaf ears in a falling-down bar now run by Adam (Will Hodges), the son of Ray's best friend who owned the place in its heyday. From Hodges' first word, we are captivated by his natural ability to develop the role he is playing, as his character undergoes sea changes.

The exchanges between Adam and his fiancee Janet (Katie Huard, a College of Charleston alum now teaching acting there) are laugh-aloud funny, yet make it clear a river of doubt runs through their relationship.

Enter mysterious guy Palmer (Mark Poremba, increasingly intense as the plot thickens), silent for much of the first act, until he becomes the catalyst for a groundswell of doubt, conflict, danger, betrayal and fear.

An intriguing, fast-paced script and a quartet of strong actors need only one thing: a gifted director. Sharon Graci, artistic director and co-founder of Pure, adds depth and breadth to the already enviable reputation of this professional theater group.

Graci pushes her players to stretch further than they knew they could go, bringing us another production as memorable as it is revelatory.