When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder

When Teddy, a brain-shot Vietnam veteran, and his spacey girlfriend, Cheryl, barge into a roadside diner in southern New Mexico one Sunday morning demanding more than plates of steak and eggs and a little light conversation from the terrified brunchers, personalities collide and change forever. Mixing hippie drug-runners with straight-laced out-of-towners and local workers, Mark Medoff's 1973 play When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder explodes the flower child idyll of "love and peace" while tearing down the myth of the Old American West. Multi Ethnic Theater's production goes deep into the dramatic core of the piece, creating a brooding atmosphere of isolation, disaffected youth, and tumbleweed living. The actors depict Medoff's demandingly diverse characters bravely, but the wildly differing dynamics of their performances create unevenness. With the biggest roles, Eric Johnson (playing the petulant graveyard-shift diner grunt Stephen "Red" Ryder) and Mark Williams (Teddy) overdo it at times. Conversely, Lily Tung (Cheryl) and Dawn Scott (Clarisse, a yuppie violinist on her way to a recital) disappear from view to such an extent that their occasional outbursts seem unwarranted. But A.J. Davenport -- as the sweetly acerbic waitress, Angel, shuffling about director-designer Lewis Campbell's evocative set with her piles of napkins and coffee mugs -- creates a perfect balance between understated melancholy and outspoken sass.