Diana Cignoni (Photo by Kayte Deiom)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Odyssey Theatre
Through October 1
Ron Sossi, artistic director of the Odyssey Theatre for the last 50-plus years, founded his highly regarded company in the spirit of experimentalism and has actively pursued that mandate over the decades of his creative tenure.
Sossi’s preoccupation with Eastern religions and philosophies is well-established, from his production of Buddha’s Big Nite! in 2003 to his present world premiere of Elephant Shavings. In Shavings, as with Nite, Sossi leaves no crystal unturned in his ongoing search for peace and enlightenment through the theatrical outlet at his disposal.
As writer and director, Sossi freely samples from an eclectic array of religious beliefs and practices, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, bhakti yoga, gestalt and meditation techniques, with snippets of Grotowski thrown in for a bit of Western balance. Unfortunately, in his bafflingly belabored search for mystical meaning, he proves a jack of too many trades following multiple masters into the philosophical thickets where he becomes hopelessly snarled.
In the laborious opening scene, a cast of actors has just concluded their final show before their summer break. Instead of relaxing at the offstage cast party, two of the company, Sam and Erin (Jeff LeBeau and Cameron Meyer), immediately launch into a stilted argument, with Erin defending scientific method while Sam, whose world view is based on the “white hot f**king reality” of his acid experiences, disparages her empirical practicality. Meanwhile, their director Peter (Jack Geren) acts as a moderator of sorts. Or is this just another of Peter’s theater games? Are we to take this argument seriously or playfully? Suffice to say, despite the best efforts of Sossi’s performers, the entire exchange seems trumped up and inorganic.
Still, it serves as a thinly effective device for the company’s lead actor Lizzie (Diana Cignoni) who has been quietly watching from the sidelines, to take center stage. After the others depart, Lizzie confides to stage manager Jill (Giovanna Quinto) that she is at a crossroads in her life. Nearing 50 years of age, she has just miscarried her baby, and her beloved spiritual mentor has just died. With her boyfriend out of the country for some months, she would just as soon retreat to a cave in complete isolation and figure out what her next path in life should be.
Jill suggests that the theater, now empty for the summer, has all the required amenities and would be the perfect “cave” for Lizzie’s Platonic retreat. At that point, the action largely becomes centered on Lizzie’s singular and concentrated exercises in self-discovery —from meditation to chanting to Sufi whirling. Before we lose patience with her navel-gazing, her solitude is broken by the arrival of peppy yet strangely mysterious visitor Pearl (Denise Blasor) who may not be the simple maintenance worker she initially claims to be.
The design elements are uniformly superb, as is typical with many Odyssey productions, and Sossi sets up some intriguing situations that promise well. Yet oddly, he repeatedly fails to follow the trails of breadcrumbs he so painstakingly lays.
In one example, a faceless theater ghost is enticingly alluded to in earlier scenes. But when Lizzie actually sees the phantom on her security camera — a truly spooky and terrifying sight — she evinces no fear whatsoever, but merely grabs a baseball bat and start chasing the ghost down hallways, shouting “Is that all you got?” — a disappointingly silly treatment of a potentially dramatically charged scene. And when Pearl is set up as what initially appears to be supernatural entity, Sossi once again flubs, making her supposedly mystical qualities so ill-defined that we never quite get a handle on exactly who or what she is, where she came from, or what her exact mission is in Lizzie’s life.
At play’s end, Pearl counsels Lizzie to forego the “spiritual supermarket” she has been so avidly pursuing in her “cave” and simply sit in a chair, repeating “Who am I?” over and over again. But by so unquestioningly taking Pearl’s advice, isn’t Lizzie facing the danger of embracing yet another false guru? And what are we to ultimately derive from her progression from agitated seeker to serene and (literal) invisibility — a bizarre denouement if there ever was one?
The “shavings” of the title references a sculptor who carves an exquisite elephant statue from an unsightly block of wood. Questioned on his methods, the sculptor states that it was just a process of paring the wood down until one got to the essence of the elephant. (The familiar anecdote, as we heard it, involved Michelangelo and a block of marble.) The play also contains a confusing allusion about the onion in Peer Gynt that was peeled away to reveal…nothingness. It’s an apt analogy for Sossi’s well-meaning but largely incomprehensible play, which leaves us scouring through the fragments for significance.
Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. Wed,. Aug, 30, 8 p.m. only, Fri.-Sat, 8 p.m. (dark Fri. Sept. 15.) Sun., 2 p.m., thru Oct. 1. www.OdysseyTheatre.com Running time: two hours and 10 minutes with one 15 minute intermission.
