VALLEY WEEKEND : ‘Highlands’ One-Act Is a Playwright’s Doodle : Limelight Theatre staging of Saroyan’s odd playlet is plodding, sincere to the point of unintended comedy.

Watching the current revival (and, reportedly, the West Coast premiere) of William Saroyan’s odd little one-act play, “My Heart’s in the Highlands,” at the Limelight Theatre, reminded me of a Picasso exhibit in Paris. It was a huge, touring show of his life’s work, so it included the landmark work, and curiosities--like one of Picasso’s doodles on a restaurant napkin.

“My Heart’s in the Highlands” is definitely a Saroyan doodle.

In this early, barely formed playlet, any Saroyan fan can see the seeds of the romantic ragamuffins and visionaries of “The Time of Your Life,” or the down home mood and boyhood charms of his book, “The Human Comedy.” Which is wonderful for Saroyan fans; for the rest, it’s almost embarrassingly anachronistic and sentimental.

Even these are qualities easy to stomach if they’re put across with enough showmanship. But director Paul Dounian’s staging is sincere to the point of unintended comedy. At the same time, this eccentric revival is too threadbare to suggest the piece’s sense of fantasy, and too plodding to take us lightly over Saroyan’s very crude episodic structure.

Like just about everything else here, the heart of “Highlands” is inherently dramatic but defies belief. By the standards of 1914 California (specifically Fresno), what poet Ben Alexander (Shant Bejanian) does may not constitute child abuse, but it’s still very cruel. Unwilling to let a wage-earning job get in the way of his writing, Ben cajoles young son Johnny (Terin Jackson) to beg for food at the grocer’s. Ignoring the fact that the boy is growing up on a diet of bread and cheese, Ben advises Johnny that money means nothing.

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Without his late mother to lay down the law, Johnny wanders the streets or gazes into the distance. He never mentions school. His Armenian grandmother sits in the corner of their little rented house, chattering and knitting and ignoring just about everything around her. In the end, the family is out on the street because Ben hasn’t paid the rent for three months.

This, believe it or not, is the stuff of a lightly whimsical piece of comedy, without even the subtext that the boy is working up some serious hatred of the father. As the impressive Jackson plays him, Johnny is enchantingly bright and precocious, the kind of kid who can get out of any situation--and who’s smart enough to have rebelled long before this. But this is a play afraid of its own drama, so Johnny grudgingly goes along with Ben’s nonsense.

Ben is too self-absorbed for his own poetic musing to compensate; this is why when Bejanian has his big moment, reacting to the rejection letter from the Atlantic Monthly, we can’t care. Rather than the tragedy of the rejected visionary that both Bejanian and Dounian are after, the rejection feels like a bit of justice. A bad father deserves worse.

We’re supposed to be distracted from all of this by the entry of aging actor Mr. MacGregor (Rowland Kerr), who’s on the lam from the local old folks’ home and loves playing trumpet music (not his own, but poet-composer Paul Bowles’, distressingly adapted for tinny synthesizer by Mary Mherian.

Even the old man’s passing isn’t very affecting, but not because Kerr doesn’t invest him with the grace of an old-time Shakespearean actor. Like Andy Takakjian’s primary-colored house set, it’s all bright artifice without the undercurrent of sadness. Like a doodle.

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DETAILS

* WHAT: “My Heart’s in the Highlands.”

* WHERE: Limelight Theatre, 10634 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. 3 p.m. Sundays.

* HOW MUCH: $12-$15.

* CALL: (818) 568-5822.