When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?

Dec. 10-Jan. 10, 2010, $22-$25, New City Stage Co. at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 215-563-7500, newcitystage.org.

by Mark Cofta

Jessica Lynn Reed

theater

New City Stage Co.'s dynamic staging of Brad Fraser's Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love in October was a big step forward for the young theater, and with another dark comedy, When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?, artistic director Ginger Dayle offers an ironic counterpoint to the season's holiday productions. The 1973 play by Mark Medoff (Children of a Lesser God) unfolds in a New Mexico diner, where classes and generations collide in a violent situation and sounds — like many '70s revivals referencing the time's unpopular war, shaky economy and disaffected youth — eerily contemporary.