‘Highway Patrol’ deepens as Dana Delany’s social media play grows more complex

Depicting a compelling, if now familiar, true story about the blurring of fact and fiction in social media, the artfully produced new play “Highway Patrol” at the Goodman Theatre asks a number of intriguing questions: What do we do with intense, caring emotions when we discover they stem from falsehoods? Does that make them less “real?” Can they, perhaps, be redeemed?

The story at hand belongs to actress Dana Delany, who earned serious stardom with her Emmy-winning performances in the ABC Vietnam War drama “China Beach” and many performances since. She has also acted onstage, and her comfort level shines through here as she portrays herself.

Pushed onto the still-newish Twitter for publicity purposes, as so many public figures were around 2012, Delany — then starring in the series “Body of Proof” — established a friendship on Twitter with Cam, a 13-year-old boy suffering from a chronic, life-threatening heart condition.

Based on their actual correspondence of direct messages and then emails, the play — a collaboration among Delany, playwright and “text curator” Jen Silverman, director Mike Donahue, and set designer Dane Laffrey — pulls us into their increasingly emotional relationship, with Delany and the exceptional young Chicago actor Thomas Murphy Molony acting out their dialogue as if it were a series of phone conversations without the device.

It isn’t really giving away too much to reveal that Cam is not what he appears to be. If he were, we’d be in pure Hallmark tear-jerker mode, which surely isn’t the Goodman’s artistic territory. Add to that Cam’s claimed clairvoyance when it comes to Dana’s family, some convenient interventions of Cam’s “Nan” (an incomparable and affecting Dot-Marie Jones, best known as Coach Beiste on “Glee”), and our more contemporary, sensitive catfishing antennae, and we know from the start that there’s a twist coming.

The first half of the play strongly establishes the depth of feeling — the love and trust — between two characters who seem to need each other. Silverman adds in details of Delany’s life and personality that made her emotionally vulnerable and, yes, a bit gullible. And Laffrey’s hyper-real, casually elegant set designs visualize the loneliness that can co-exist with a luxurious life in Los Angeles.

The unique, and murkily complex, qualities of the work emerge as the truth does. It’s the sympathy for the deceiver that provides “Highway Patrol” its depth.

Liz Lauren

To a degree, this piece falls in a category with other recent works relying on an archive of real-life artifacts like Lucas Hnath’s “Dana H.,” which played at the Goodman, and director Tina Satter’s “Is This a Room” (later the film “Reality”), based on the FBI interview transcripts of Reality Winner, who leaked classified intelligence about Russian election meddling. Both those works beat a surprising path to Broadway, playing in repertory with each other.

“Highway Patrol” could get there, given Delany’s name and the high quality of performances and production, but it simply doesn’t have the actual stakes — hostage taking and prison time — that those other works possess. This isn’t so much a thriller as thriller-inspired.

There are also some deficiencies, some potentially addressable and some not.

Liz Lauren

The creators faced a challenge in how to transition from illusion to reality. One choice was to let the audience in as Dana herself discovers more. But that may have depicted Dana as even more credulous. Instead, at a certain point we enter the realm of a dramatic irony, where we know (rather than just suspect) more than our first-person narrator.

Unfortunately, the initial introduction of the twist feels muddled. And once we’ve departed from Delany’s point of view, it becomes harder to convey her swirl of confusion. Donahue does his best to maintain a theatricality by having post-reveal messages delivered in multiple voices. It’s a thoughtful idea, but too self-conscious, even arbitrary.

But the biggest limitation here is that the story simply doesn’t have a satisfying ending and, although it raises smart thematic questions, “Highway Patrol” lags as it brings it all to a point.

That’s the problem with reality. To become artistically powerful, sometimes it needs more fiction.