Theater review: 'The Great God Pan'

Theater review: 'The Great God Pan'

©2012 Joan Marcus

Jeremy Strong plays Jamie and Sarah Goldberg is his girlfriend, Paige, at Playwrights Horizons.

Amy Herzog’s tightly wound and intensely emotional play, “The Great God Pan,” concerns a man’s reckoning with his past and his memories.

The story riffs on the common conundrum: If a tree falls in the forest and ...? The question here is: If an event happens to you as a child and you don’t remember it, does it have bearing on who you are as a grownup?

Jamie (Jeremy Strong), 32, a Brooklyn journalist, faces that query after an unexpected visit from Frank (Keith Nobbs), a kid he grew up with in Highland Park, N.J.

As boys, they shared a baby-sitter, Polly (Joyce van Patten), who’s now 80-ish and battling dementia. Cleancut Jamie and spike-haired, heavily tattooed Frank seem to have zip in common. They never did.

Then Frank explains he was victimized as a 5-year-old and says Jamie was, too. Jamie searches his mind and seeks out his parents (Becky Ann Baker and Peter Friedman) â€" for confirmation one way or the other.

The situation weighs on Jamie’s relationship with girlfriend, Paige (Sarah Goldberg), an ex-dancer-turned-counselor. Their relatively happy six-year affair has hit a bump just as Frank arrives. Jamie’s past and future have him reeling.

“The Great God Pan” â€" a title drawn from an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem about the forest sprite â€" joins her earlier acclaimed multigenerational family dramas, “After the Revolution” and “4,000 Miles.”

Her latest work doesn’t break new ground as she covers the persistence and slipperiness of memory. But she maps the tale out with care and tells it with sensitivity and eloquence. Herzog is an exciting theatrical voice, a writer who excels at stories of quiet urgency.

She has an ally in Carolyn Cantor, who directs the Playwrights Horizons presentation. Leafy scenery envelopes the stage cannily, underscoring the constant presence of the past. The ensemble is simply terrific. Newcomer Erin Welhelmi rounds out the cast in heartbreaking fashion as Paige’s anorectic client.

Strong, seen recently on stage in lighter roles in “Our House” and “The Coward,” rises to the challenges of this dramatic role and then some. He is as natural as breath, but late in the 80-minute play, he radiates so much pain that you may be holding yours.

jdziemianowicz@nydailynews.com