By Carolyn Hayes Harmer

Posted: Feb. 1, 2014 at 5:05 p.m.

Tell a stranger anything about your family, and chances are, the words “It’s a long story” will enter the conversation. This is the genesis of Tim Clue and Spike Manton’s “Leaving Iowa,” a veritable Gordian knot of past and present, childhood memory and adult hindsight. In the production now at Tipping Point Theatre, director Beth Torrey leans hard into the stream-of-consciousness turns of this memory play, obliterating the line between the hilarious, nostalgic misadventures of one Midwestern nuclear family and the underlying melancholy of a belated apology.

The story is helmed by Don Browning (David Wolber), of the Iowa Brownings, although the adult Don has long since made Boston his home. But when a family event brings him back to tiny Winterset (birthplace of John Wayne, and don’t you forget it, pilgrim), Don decides it’s long past time to take a side trip, which slams him back into memories of summer vacations of old.

Back in the family car, he retraces the route of a particular road trip, with Dad (Dave Davies) at the wheel, Mom (Brenda Lane) riding shotgun, and Sis (Alysia Kolascz) pestering anyone within earshot. In the present day, however, Don is in the driver’s seat, his only companion the silent container holding his father’s ashes, which have waited three years to finally be put to rest.

Because the adult Don’s journey — and the decisions he makes — are inextricable from past context, the stories unfold in parallel, with one timeline picking up the narrative thread even before the other has a chance to set it down. To reinforce the perceived dullness of the place Don so yearned to leave, the play cycles through a revolving door of characters that seem to personify the properties of being Iowan. In addition to the nuclear-family actors who double in multiple outlandish roles, the production does itself credit by including utility player Ryan Carlson, who perfects the intentional repetition of the text across a dozen flavors of comically understated earnestness.

Torrey and company honor the script’s fluidity above all else, and even double down on this fast and loose approach to time and place with staging that is utterly unconcerned with the laws of physics. Because literalism would impossibly bog down the timing, the rest of the production design follows suit.

Suzanne Young’s costume design begins with summer-vacation clothes of impressive versatility, and then adds on some quick-change pieces for show; similarly, Ryan Fisher holds back on properties, primarily reserving those with the most comic flair. Rather than capture the sense of everywhere and nowhere, designer Monika Essen makes a giant iconic scenic statement, which has the added benefit of a central projection screen for slide-show backdrop images and supplemental jokes.

These visual aids are helpful guideposts amid the hurly-burly; David Koltunchik’s subtle lighting also nudges between past and present, in concert with Wolber’s donning and doffing of the young Don’s red baseball cap. Stage manager Tracy L. Spada is responsible for the quick cue work, and her timing is exquisite, especially for one stretch of persistent car horn. The highway noises are nicely layered in by sound designer Julia Garlotte, who also delivers a whistle-stop blend of songs that notice where we are on the way to wherever we’re going.

The family dynamic in Don’s memory scenes is played for laughs, and the translatable comedy tropes land hard thanks to capable timing and teamwork. Kolascz’s carefully unhinged rat-a-tat whining is especially fun, although Lane’s shifting tactics as peacemaker, taskmaster and occasional contrarian believably hold the family apparatus together.

Wolber proves adeptly adrift as the adult Don, balks at unfairness as his younger self, and capably leads the many abrupt tonal shifts between. But the central relationship tension — the regrettably widening divide between Don and his father — must be performed as a duet. Here, Davies acquits himself well as a focal point, pulling laugh lines out of thin air in all his road trip scenes. But it’s his work out of sync with the grown-up Don that is the most telling; his face, at once expressive and inscrutable, provides all the impetus the show needs to keep seeking answers and absolution.

This “Leaving Iowa” is a rocketing comic whirligig that spends a lot of time on the funny bone, but also makes some nostalgic emotional appeals in the realm of bygones and closure. The production is set to coyly draw viewers in to its sweet journey across years and miles, then grabs on and hauls them along with such speed and comic precision that there’s never a moment to ask, “Are we there yet?”

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SHOW DETAILS:
“Leaving Iowa”
Tipping Point Theatre
361 E Cady St., Northville, MI 48167
8 p.m. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Jan. 29, 30, 31, Feb. 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, Mar. 5, 6, 7
2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 1, 8, 15, 22, Mar. 1, 8
3 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday Feb. 7, 14, 18, 21, 28, Mar. 7
Running time: 2 hours, (including 10-minute intermission)
$27-32
248-347-0003
www.tippingpointtheatre.com