‘The Last Outpost’: A Moving Morality Tale

“You need a hacksaw to cut through the racial tension in this town”goes the all too accurate assessment from Valerie, a bartender trying to hold down the fort of civility in “The Last Outpost,” a production of Watts Village Theater Company at Los Angeles Theatre Center’s Theatre 4.

She’s fighting a losing battle as the schisms widen among her black, white and Korean customers. Gripping, urgent and eloquently voiced, Lynn Manning’s new play explores these barroom rifts as an ethnic no-man’s land in microcosm.

As in many issue-oriented dramas, divisions are sometimes laid out with heightened tidiness as the characters articulate their respective polemics. However, the occasional preachiness is kept to a minimum by Manning’s keen ear for naturalistic dialogue, Roxanne Rogers’ razor-sharp direction and moving performances from a tightknit ensemble.

All three elements combine to keep this morality tale of present-day L.A. convincingly rendered in human rather than ideological terms.

As Valerie, Kimberly Huie provides a sensitive emotional fulcrum for the piece: wrestling with her divided loyalties to her black roots and her affection for Karen (Allison Sie), a smart, charming young Korean recently hired as a second-shift bartender.

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Polarized racial hatreds are masterfully embodied in John Freeland Jr.’s Vernon, an old-timer seething with black rage; Robert Schuch’s Bob, an equally bigoted white slob; and Francois Chau as Karen’s father, a successful businessman appalled at his daughter’s chosen occupation.

Calixto Hernandez and Chaka Forman provide contrast and comic relief as a pair of medical students who manage to cross their respective racial borders. The bar’s owner, Danny (Tom McCleister), presides over the fractiousness with a tolerance born of hard-won personal battle.

Never romanticized, the possibility of hope Manning ultimately holds out is authentically bought with tough-minded insight.

* “The Last Outpost,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theatre 4, 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends July 30. $15. (213) 485-1681. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.