Aurora’s ‘Horses’ too tame for its own good

Through March 2. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. $15. Aurora Theatre, 128 E. Pike St., Lawrenceville. 678-226-6222. www.auroratheatre.com.

Bottom line: Essentially tantamount to beating a dead horse.

For all of its fervid declarations about the transformative power of literature – more precisely, how the ancient words and language of Homer's "The Iliad" might speak to the heart and mind or spark the thoughts and dreams of a menacing Jersey street kid – the prevailing wisdom in "Tamer of Horses" seems to be that, at least sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover.

As grandiosely written by William Mastrosimone (“Extremities”), it’s no coincidence that the troubled teen is named Hector. Not simply a high-school dropout but also illiterate, not merely a runaway but an orphan as well, he’s a wannabe rapper passing his time as a petty criminal.

We first meet Hector lurking around a rural farmhouse late one night. Soon enough, Ty and Georgiane, the childless husband and wife who live there, are offering him food and shelter, taking him in and otherwise under their collective wing – if not really as an answer to their prayers, then as the surrogate son they never had or as another impressionable student with lessons to learn about the value of life and education (they’re both idealistic teachers).

Hector opts to spend that first night up in a tree, drunkenly howling at the moon like the “wild animal” they initially label him as being. To hear the kid tell it, though, there may be more to him than meets the eye. “Nobody ever gives me a chance,” he eventually complains. “They take one look at me and think they know who I am.”

Presumably, and with all the subtlety and nuance of one of those old after-school specials on TV (albeit peppered with modern R-rated profanity), Ty and Georgiane have things to learn from Hector, too.

Somehow sensing in Hector the soul of a poet, Ty teaches him how to read and about the importance of self-discipline and the meaning of conscience, in the process rekindling his own lost passion for the profession. If nothing else, Hector teaches Ty various tricks of the mugger’s trade.

A singular highlight of director Jaclyn Hofmann’s Aurora Theatre production is the elaborate set design of Lee Maples, who works wonders utilizing every square inch of the theater’s intimate studio space.

The performances, however, tend to be overwrought. Maria Rodriguez-Sager does what she can with the thankless role of Georgiane. But Anthony P. Rodriguez (no relation), Aurora’s producing artistic director, and Dane Troy, a member of the theater’s apprentice company, don’t get off quite so easily as Ty and Hector.

The two of them chew up any number of Big Emotional Scenes, basically painting by numbers rather than providing their characters with ample shading between the lines to validate the abrupt transitions they undergo. Troy’s Hector is particularly unconvincing, and it doesn’t help that he’s probably too old for the part to begin with.

Then again, by the end of Mastrosimone’s increasingly heavy-handed play, whether Hector is a misunderstood dreamer beneath it all or exactly the hardened delinquent he appears to be is a decidedly moot point.