By Daryl H. Miller

Times Staff Writer

Garden Grove--As a commercial airliner lurches through turbulence, a pair of middle-aged women clasp hands and pray for smooth air ahead. I can bear anything as long as I know it's going to end, one of them says. These traveling companions know all too well, however, that pain sometimes goes on and on, with no end in sight. In Terrence McNally's "A Perfect Ganesh" they are buffetted by loss, guilt and despair and soothed, ultimately, by compassion and hope. McNally's 1993 play is, arguably, his best. It is more deeply affecting than"Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" ,more subtly insinuating than"The Lisbon Traviata" or"Love! Valour! Compassion!" Frustratingly, however, it remains all but unseen in Southern California. Small companies in Santa Barbara and Solana Beach have given it solid staging, but no major professional company has taken it on. Another small troupe, the fledgling Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, puts earnest effort into a visiting production at the Gem theater, but the company simply doesnít have the experience or the personnel to master the complex, yet oh, so delicate play.

Longtime friends Margaret Civil and Katherine Brynne live comfortably among the country-club set of Greenwich, Conn. Yet each has suffered profound loss, with more on the way. Yearning to distance themselves from the pain, they embark on a trip to India, where they are, at first, overwhelmed by the countryís stark contrastsóits spiritual serenity and crushing crowds, its breathtaking beauty amid grotesque poverty. Encountering so much that is so different from what they know, they find their fear and prejudice rushing to the surface. Yet, eventually the onslaught scours them clean, stripping away their reserve, pretense and moral squeamishness. They emerge purified, as if by a plunge into the sacred Ganges.

Their travels are closely observed, and at times directed, by the Hindu god Ganesha, whom the audience sees with his elephantís head and extra set of arms, but whom the ladies see as various people they meet along the way. Katharineís son, killed in a gay-bashing episode, is reincarnated in various people as well. As Margaret and Katharine, Joan Meissenburg and Susan Shearer/Stewart are, respectively, fussy and over-organized, carefree and sloppy"a virtual-Odd Couple" pairing, as the script calls for. In a role usually played by a man, Cathy Petz conveys Lord Ganesha's playfulness, as well as his shocked disappointment ("Such thoughtless, needless cruelty-Oh, dear! Oh, dear! All of you!") Ben Yater brings variety to his many roles, combining a particularly nice mixture of grit and vulnerability as Katharineís son. Yet no one ever quite relaxes into his or her part, never lives it. Under Dave Bartonís direction, the enterprise sometimes comes close too, yet remains far, far away from what it could be. The show's energy slips into stasis, and a bored, restless audience stops listening to the extraordinary words that made McNally a Pulitzer Prize finalist for this play. If one listens, however, there is much to be learned. As Lord Ganesha sends Margaret and Katharine on their trip, he quietly marvels at these two little, insignificant, magnificent lives And so must we, for their journey is our own. BE THERE

"A Perefct Ganesh" Grove Theater Centerís Gem Theater, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 6 p.m. Sunday. Ends March 29. $11. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Review: Terrence McNally’s 1993 comedy-drama features his typical themes but goes on too long.

By ERIC MARCHESE Special to the Register

If there’s a common theme to the plays of Terrence McNally, it’s expressed in the title of one of his more recent plays, “Love! Valour! Compassion!”McNally’s plays—whether the libretto to the mega-budgeted “Ragtime” or “A Perfect Ganesh,” an overlooked little play from 1993—are about the various tragedies of the human condition. He preaches tolerance and compassion and prays that his characters find it in their hearts to exhibit love and valor. That’s exactly the case with “Ganesh,” which the Rude Guerrilla Theater Company bravely tackles at Grove Theater Center, the show’s premiere staging in Orange or Los Angeles counties. I say “bravely” because McNally’s plays are not textbook dramas. They’re infused with poetry, and a typical text alternates between subtlety and a sort of sublime preachiness.

The premise of this surreal comedy-drama is deceptively simple: Two suburban Conneticut housewives, Margaret (Joan Meissenburg) and Katharine (Susan Shearer-Stewart), flee their sterile lives and stale marriages and trek to India. Their guardian angel is the Hindu god Ganesh[a] (Cathy Petz), who assumes the shapes of fellow travelers and Indians of every caste. It’s hard to imagine how friendship ever flowered between the two women. Katherine, who prefers to be called “Kitty,” is earthy and adventure-loving, embracing every new experience with joy. “I’m just your basic white trash,” she chortles at the airport. The product of upper-income breeding and Yankee good taste, Margaret…is self-conscious amid the squalor of India, pulling back in horror from practically all the pair encounter.

McNally cleverly implies the obvious question in our minds—“What are these two women running away from?”—then reveals bits of their background a little at a time. Kitty’s beloved son Walter was beaten to death by gay bashers, M[argaret’s] toddler son was run over by a car, and both women feel suffocated in their marriages. The problem with “Ganesh” is that McNally makes his most important points in the first act and part of the second, then continues to harp on his themes of spiritual redemption and forgiveness for another half-hour or more. Another problem with “A Perfect Ganesh” is that the differences between Kitty and Margaret are so cut and dried, they almost defy reality. Shearer-Stewart is the ideal Kitty, a sturdy, mellow blonde capable of displaying great compassion and pain without being robbed of the character’s essential joie-de-vivre. But Meissenburg’s Margaret is more a wimpy, precise practitioner of political correctness than the self-described “bossy bitch” of the script. Her performance mitigates the differences between the women, de-emphasizing McNally’s intent.

Director Dave Barton finds some interesting rhythms in McNally’s poetic dialogue, and he makes full and effective use of GTC’s Gem Theater space, broadening his staging to include the theater’s aisles and balconies. This less-than-perfect “Ganesh” is also blessed with solid performances by Petz as the all-embracing, elephant-headed Ganesha, and the acting skills of Ben Yater. Both actors play more than a half-dozen roles each, swirling around Margaret and Kitty as the women undergo the gradual healing that first brought them to India.

The California Tech

After hitting hard with the abortion drama In the House of the Lord and letting it all hang out with Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, my co-worker Dave Barton’s Rude Guerrilla Theater Company switches gears again with the thought-provoking magical realism of A Perfect Ganesh. Written by Terrence McNally of Love! Valour! Compassion! Fame, A Perfect Ganesh is a conceptually daring work in which two rich white women from Conneticut travel to India in search of an elusive spiritual fulfillment, encountering the elephant-headed god Ganesha in many different guises along the way. The travel serves as a backdrop and catalyst for personal revelations on poverty, gay-bashing, racism, disease, communication and forgiveness.

Rude Guerrilla’s low-budget production makes wonderf ul use of a few Spartan props and the full interior of the beautiful Gem Theatre to evoke a wide variety of settings, and Susan Shearer/Stewart is a standout amongst the four-person cast, which does a wonderful job tackling the rich material (though Ganesha could have used a bit more gusto). While not 100% successful, this is an ambitious play that makes a trip to Garden Grove rewarding.

OC WEEKLY

Piling too many literary references, PC topics and New Age-romanticized Eastern notions into one evening can make for a literary, PC and New Agey evening, but it does-n’t make for a very insightful or entertaining play. Terrence McNally uses his plot of two American women traveling through India as a vehicle for everything from trumpeting HIV awareness and the danger of racial stereotypes to the misfortune of breast cancer. The result is so unconsciously self-parodying that it’s impossible to take anything seriously. It’s amazing that the four actors trudge straight-faced through this three-hour dreck. This Dave Barton-directed production just emphasizes the script’s deficiencies. (In the interests of full disclosure, Barton is a Weekly theater reviewer.)

Best Friends Margaret (Joan Meissenburg) and Katharine (Susan Shearer-Stewart) are in a match so misplaced it makes The Odd Couple seem like a model pair. Their friendship comes across as so forced that their unspoken secrets to each other make sense to everyone but them. What is apparent is that both are plagued with guilty consciences over their sons’ deaths. Katahrine’s gay-bashed son haunts and compels her to travel to India to touch lepers on whom she projects her anxiety of HIV-infected people—the world’s latest untouchables. Margaret’s run-ver son and the neglected lump in one of her breasts propel her journey. Shearer-Sewart portrays Katharine as a schizophrenic pool of genuine concern and enthusiasm and troubled undercurrents. Stumbling over occasional lines, Meissenburg’s Margaret is mostly cold and detached, despite the notion that it’s a rationalization to cover up her anxiety.

The elephant-headed, four-armed Hindu god Ganesha (Cathy Petz) arrogantly presides over the women’s trip and takes the form of characters as varied as a Japanese tourist, an Indian maid and a leper. No doubt running around backstage for his many costume changes, Ben Yater (now a Weekly intern) provides the rest of the sometimes moving, sometimes surface characters. (Anna Barr) Gem Theater, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove, Fri-Sat., 8 p.m.;Sun., 6 p.m. Through March 29. $8.50-$11.