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Stage Review

In ‘High,’ Kathleen Turner rises but play lacks depth

Evan Jonigkeit and Kathleen Turner, pictured in the New York production of “High,’’ are reprising their roles for a national tour. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times/File/The New York Times

From the beginning of her remarkable career, when she cunningly reduced William Hurt to a hapless dupe in 1981’s “Body Heat,’’ Kathleen Turner has often spelled trouble onscreen and onstage.

In “High,’’ though, Turner plays a Catholic nun who goes to great lengths to get someone out of trouble. The dogged attempts by Sister Jamison Connelly (or Sister Jamie as she is called) to rehabilitate an angry, psychologically wounded young drug addict add up to a kind of rescue mission.

Turner performs much the same service for “High,’’ a melodrama by Matthew Lombardo, now at the Cutler Majestic Theatre under the direction of Rob Ruggiero, that manages to be simultaneously overheated and undercooked. Her deeply felt, precisely modulated, wholly committed performance is the best - if not quite sufficient - reason to see “High.’’

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This is a play with a brief and curious history. After enjoying successful runs at Hartford’s TheaterWorks and the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, “High’’ flopped on Broadway earlier this year, only to defiantly resurface now, with Boston the first stop on a national tour. Lombardo is currently writing a screenplay for a film version.

The playwright has points to make about the tidal pull of addiction and the human need to grope toward some kind of faith, especially if one is consumed by guilt for past transgressions and wishes forgiveness for them. However, he makes them with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. There’s talk in “High’’ about the need to resist temptation, and one wishes Lombardo had himself fought harder against the temptation toward sensationalism. Revelations and high-decibel showdowns abound, yet mostly ring hollow.

But Turner is entirely believable, and often compelling, as Sister Jamie, who battled alcoholism, went through a lengthy period of homelessness, and is now working as a counselor in a drug rehabilitation center. So entirely does Turner inhabit this tough-talking, frequently profane nun (her inimitably resonant voice has seldom been more fitting) that she doesn’t seem to be acting at all. Even in the unprepossessing attire of a black sweater, black pants, and blue blouse, Turner commands the stage, projecting her usual don’t-tread-on-me aura and delivering her lines with pinpoint timing and a sardonic inflection that adds humor or force to words that otherwise might lack them.

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The challenge confronting Sister Jamie goes by the name of Cody Randall, played by Evan Jonigkeit. A 19-year-old addict and gay prostitute, Cody was found in a motel room in a drug-addled stupor, with a 14-year-old boy by his side, dead of an overdose. Now Sister Jamie’s supervisor, a priest named Father Michael Delpapp (Timothy Altmeyer), has assigned her the task of counseling and stabilizing loose-cannon Cody, a challenge she is reluctant to tackle. But Father Michael puts on the pressure, saying: “This one is different . . . Sister, he has no one.’’

Well, maybe that will prove to be true as “High’’ unfolds and maybe it won’t. In any case, Sister Jamie buckles down to work, and is soon locked in a contest of wills with Cody. She mocks his tough-guy poses; she proves she can out-swear him and out-stare him; she forces him to substitute “Yes’’ for “Yeah.’’ Then she starts probing deeper, forcing Cody to dig into the traumas of his nightmarish childhood. “I am a nun, and yes, I am a recovering alcoholic, and yes, Cody Randall, I can help you,’’ she tells him.

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But can she help herself? That question starts to surface as Sister Jamie revisits her own painful past and her own frayed vulnerability starts to become apparent. “I need to believe that people can and do change,’’ she says at one point, and we believe in her need to believe.

As Cody, Jonigkeit tries hard, but there’s little depth to his portrayal. Then again, what he’s been asked to play is less a character than a set of extreme sociological symptoms. Altmeyer, meanwhile, is hamstrung by the one-dimensionality of Father Michael.

Only Turner manages to conquer the limitations of “High.’’ As Matty Walker in “Body Heat,’’ Turner famously said that “My temperature runs a couple of degrees high . . .’’ Thankfully, that’s still true.


Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com.