The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • G5

MONDAY, JULY 6, 2015 The Boston Globe G5 MondayArts Kyra Sedgwick and Mary Wiseman in "Off the Main Road," at Williamstown Theatre Festival. STAGE REVIEW OFF THE MAIN ROAD Play by William Inge Directed by: Evan Cabnet. Set, Takeshi Kata. Costumes, Paloma Young. Lights, Ben Stanton.

Sound, Ben Truppin-Brown. At: Williamstown Theatre Festival, Williamstown, through July 19. 413-597-3400, www.wtfestival.org A flawed path in 'Off the Main Road' Cabnet, too often comes across like an especially lurid episode of "Peyton Place," the soap opera that began churning up the primetime suds in the mid-1960s, around the time Inge is believed to have written this overheated drama. If David Cromer's recent Huntington Theatre Company production of "Come Back, Little Sheba" showcased Inge's strengths, "Off the Main Road" abounds in reminders of the playwright's weaknesses: his tendency toward exposition-heavy dialogue, melodramatic excess (a shortcoming also of his screenplay for "Splendor in the and dramatic shortcuts. To be fair, there are flashes of Inge's empathy, humor, and psychological insight in "Off the Main Road." The play also addresses a frequent Inge theme the focuses on the influence of Jimmy's own mother.

Meanwhile, Julia embarks on a romance with Victor (Daniel Sharman, very good), a college student; the tenderness of the love affair between these two young people contrasts sharply with the other relationships in "Off the Main Road." But the production runs aground at the end of Act 1, when Inge ask us to believe that Faye would respond with ardor to the sexual coercion of a cab driver named Gino, played by Aaron Costa Ganis. It's a cringe-inducing scene, from start when Gino forces his way into the cottage despite Faye's protests (he has, he claims, an ability to spot a "look of loneliness and want and crazy desires" in a woman's eyes) to finish, when Faye, in Gi-no's arms, actually says, "What rapture!" A chunk of Act 2 is devoted to the consequences of that encounter, including an impressively staged burst of violence (the fight director is Thomas Schall). Eventually, Faye makes a decision about the direction of her life that is awfully hard to stomach. This is not a case of seeing domestic violence and gender roles through a present-day lens; it's that Faye's choices aren't persuasive even in the social context established in this play. The bottom line: "Off the Main Road" is useful in terms of telling the story of Inge's career more fully, but it's hard to imagine it will amount to much more than a footnote to that career.

Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoinglobe.com. THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION PART II: The Metal Years At: Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, Monday at 7 p.m. Tickets: $11.25, seniors and children $9.25. 617-734-2500, www.coolidge.org to be dead within five years; for a few, you learn, the prediction proved accurate. Their stories are harrowing, but paradoxically add up to something oddly inspiring: Dignity, acceptance, and compassion persevere.

Be grateful, then, that Spheeris's desire to see her gem of a film done right was one reason that this new set took so long to materialize. The result is worth celebrating: 2K high-definition restoration makes these documentaries shine as never before. Bonus material, including copious outtakes as well as documentary coverage of the films themselves, overflow the three discs to fill a fourth. A beautifully executed booklet includes a strong essay by the author and historian Domenic Priore. For the truly devoted, the first "Decline" features a convivial, revealing commentary track by Spheeris and her daughter, box-set producer Anna Fox, plus an alternate voice-over of fannish gush from Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl (whose bandmate Pat Smear is seen in the film as Germs guitarist and talking head).

Recommended even more strongly is the "Metal Years" commentary Spheeris recorded with glam-metal lifer Nadir D'Priest, which humanizes outrageous figures and comes clean about notoriously faked scenes involving Osbourne and Holmes. No commentary was prepared for "Part III," just a brief making-of video short from which a viewer could conclude that, for at least some of her subjects, Spheeris may have provided a longed-for sense of parental guidance. But it would be difficult to imagine a voice-over more illuminating than the candid talk and naked revelation provided throughout this gripping film. Steve Smith can be reached at steven.smithgIobe.com. Follow him on Twitter nightafternight.

tidal pull of desire albeit with less skill than his better plays. Sedgwick has demonstrated a capacity for subtle expressivity throughout her career, including her Emmy-winning stint on TNT's "The Closer." She's too good an actress not to have her moments in "Off the Main Road." But her overall efforts at portraiture are undermined by the broadly written nature of her role as Faye Garrit, an affluent woman who flees her abusive husband and takes up residence in a lakeside cottage outside St. Louis. When we first see Faye, she's wearing a fur coat and sunglasses and projecting an air of extreme nervousness. Once she removes the sunglasses, it's apparent why: Faye has a black eye, given to her by Manny (Jeremy Davidson), the volatile ex-baseball player to From documentary filmmaker Penelope Spheeris's "The Decline of Western Civilization" trilogy, clockwise from top left: Faster Pussycat (1988's "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Darby Crash (1981's original a scene from 1998's "The Decline of Western Civilization Part and Black Flag in the original "Decline." interviews that most of the film's participants hadn't been born when the original "Decline" appeared.

The techniques and pacing consciously echoed those of the previous films. Vivid footage of bands like Final Conflict, Naked Aggression, and Litmus Green were By Don Aucoin GLOBE STAFF WILLIAMSTOWN -The first-ever full production of William Inge's "Off the Main Road" is a bona fide Event. If only the play were better. Apart from its newsworthiness, there's an inherent value to exploring every facet of a playwright as consequential as Inge, the author of 'Ticnic," "Bus Stop," and "Come Back, Little Sheba." So it's understandable that Mandy Greenfield, the new artistic director at Williamstown Theatre Festival, would choose it to launch her first season. But "Off the Main Road," starring Kyra Sedgwick and directed by Evan Decades of 'Decline Years later, trilogy of rock films still enthralls By Steve Smith GLOBE STAFF History repeats itself, Karl Marx memorably declared: "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." Intentionally or not, the director Penelope Spheeris flipped that equation with "The Decline of Western Civilization," the trilogy of films for which she ultimately and rightly will be best remembered "Wayne's World" and "Black Sheep" notwithstanding.

Long sought by fans and collectors, the films were finally released last week by Shout! Factory in DVD and Blu-ray box sets. Having made an indelible impression with the original "The Decline of Western Civilization," a raw and abrasive yet humane and revealing glimpse of the hard-core punk-rock scene in Los Angeles circa 1979-80, Spheeris employed similar tactics to dramatically different ends in two subsequent documentaries. "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years" (1988) was rooted in the Sunset Strip glam-metal scene of the late '80s. "The Decline of Western Civilization: Part III" (1998), a lesser-known effort, returned to the punk milieu. Compared with the blunt-force impact of the first "Decline" whose cast of memorable characters included the dazed, doomed Germs vocalist Darby Crash, the grandly posturing 'zine edi-tor-and-art-punk singer Claude Bessey and the contented bohemians of its "Metal Years" sibling devoted screen time to established celebs like Ozzy Osbourne, Gene Simmons, and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry.

The first film's skeptical idealism was replaced with the gung-ho braggadocio of would-be rock stars who aspired to fame and wealth, or vice versa. Ludicrous braggadocio aside, whom she is married. She has been accompanied to the cottage by Julia, her 17-year-old daughter from a previous husband. Mary Wiseman portrays Julia with a wry self-awareness that results in the production's most appealing performance. Faye insists to Julia that she will never go back to the abusive Manny.

So what's the next step for a woman who now, at middle age, has to figure out who she is and build a new life for herself outside of marriage? Inge doesn't show much interest in answering that question in any depth. Instead, he enmeshes Faye in not-terribly-scintillating arguments with her overbearing mother, played by Estelle Parsons, and a lengthy conversation with Faye's closeted gay friend, Jimmy (Howard W. Overshown) that partly PHOTOS COURTESY OF SHOUT! FACTORY What becomes apparent straightaway, though, is that bands were no longer her focus of attention. In her previous films, Spheeris incorporated punk and metal Everymen, using the faces and voices of fans, facilitators, and scenesters to illustrate lifestyles, experiences, and motivations. Those interviews, the subtle heart of the first "Decline" pair, became the main story in "Part III." So-called "gutterpunks" street kids with Technicolor hair, discomfiting piercings, and names like Squid, Spoon, and Pin-wheel describe the situations that forced them to leave home (abuse and neglect, usually), the conditions they endure to survive, and the fierce outsider camaraderie that bonds them.

The cynicism of the first "Decline" had given way to bleak acceptance. Nearly all of Spheeris's subjects in "Part III" expressed their expectation there's something quaintly relatable about their outsize goals. Only occasionally, as in a harrowing scene featuring the epically inebriated WA.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes and his mother, does the darker side of the fantasy seep through. Despite the sharp contrast between the gritty punk film and its glamorized offspring, both became staples of nascent cable TV and bootleg home video because of their vibrant concert footage Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Fear in the first volume; Faster Pussycat and Megadeth in the second and vivid interviews some raw, others embellished in ways only revealed years later.

(They'll be screened together at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline on Monday night.) In "Part III," shot in 1996-97, Spheeris returned to the punk scene, establishing instantly with a string of quick.