A distinctive sensibility fuels the experimental works of Scottish playwright David Greig. It's certainly on tap in "San Diego." Greig's prismatic 2003 reverie on American dislocation receives its U.S. premiere at the Rude Guerrilla Theatre Company.

Inspired by Greig's first trip to the United States, "San Diego" begins with an authorial stand-in (Keith Bennett, arresting as ever) on a British Airways flight. Greig plunges him into calamity after disembarking, which lets Greig and his proxy ascend above a subconscious narrative that crisscrosses itself like so many flying geese.

Greig's assailant, a Nigerian from London, seeks his mother, allegedly a backup singer for Wings, enlisting two indigents in his quest. The British Airways pilot cannot locate his layover hotel for the call girl he's hired. His actor son plays a pilot in a cheesy disaster flick. His institutionalized daughter redefines "sins of the flesh," while his daughter-in-law considers a convent. Those are just the clearly perceptible scenarios.

Placing us on either side of the map that centers his striking set design, director Dave Barton stages Greig's symbolist musings with determination, and his fearless players bare their marrow. As pilot and son, David Cramer and Ryan Harris expertly merge arch and heartfelt energies. Melita Ann Sager and Robert Dean Nunez make an eerily committed self-mutilator and asylum seeker. Amanda Salas' unlikely nun, Chrisgen Whitfield's stowaway and the sacred fools of Thomas Helsper and Rick Kopps are other standouts in a full-throttle troupe.

Yet, for all its poetic heft, Greig's nonlinear text proves less than dramatically pliable. Conceptual similes that impress in print flirt with stasis on stage, despite their facility. The Pirandello motifs are scantly developed, and the many location shifts tax forward propulsion. An admirably ambitious effort, finally "San Diego" is sans point.

"San Diego," Empire Theater, 202 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Also, 8 p.m. Sept. 19. Ends Sept. 21. Adult audiences. $20. (714) 547-4688. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Topsy-turvy in ‘San Diego’

Review: Rude Guerrilla U.S. premiere of David Greig’s semisurreal play is electric, yet grounded.

By ERIC MARCHESE

Special to the Register

In “San Diego,” Scottish playwright David Greig shows us a sort of self-induced schizophrenia wherein the writer is simultaneously viewing his characters with an objective, all-seeing eye and yet is also one of those characters himself.

It’s a fanciful technique that takes the story of a Scottish writer named David Greig on his first visit to the United States – specifically, to San Diego – and integrates it with bizarre events and strange encounters. As the play is part fact, part fabrication, its hallmark is a semi-surrealism laced with absurdism.

Considering Greig’s mastery of his craft and his deft mixture of comedic and tragic, satirical and dramatic, it’s surprising that Rude Guerrilla Theater Company’s staging is the 2003 play’s U.S. premiere.

In an impressive Rude G production, Dave Barton’s firmly grounded staging quivers with electricity. Barton opens things with Greig (Keith Bennett) dozing aboard his transatlantic flight, as the cast roams the stage in slow-motion to mournful, almost funereal music. It’s an apt prologue, for most of Greig’s characters are sleepwalking through life, few feel any joy, and for some, death is just an eye-blink away.

Barton’s partially in-the-round staging places audience members on both sides of the stage. His stripped-down scene design features a colorful map of San Diego painted onto the floor, punctuated with longitude and latitude markings.

Greig’s text wickedly lances American and British culture while empathizing with those on the outside of economic prosperity looking in. Geographically far-flung, his characters are connected by cell phones, flight paths and freeways, but more often than not, their relationships are a series of near-miss connections. None feels fulfilled, a theme conveyed artfully yet without contrivance.

The kaleidoscope of characters and their interlocking tales are compelling, and Barton’s cast is uniformly fine and nuanced. Post-intermission, the point of each story is driven home, often with a cruelty only fate can deal.

Expecting her first baby, Marie (Amanda Salas) fretfully forces her actor husband Andrew (Ryan Harris) to watch “America’s Missing Children.” Prayer is her panacea, and as “San Diego” progresses, her connection with God intensifies.

The city’s underbelly is exposed in the story of Daniel (Chrisgen Whitfield), a displaced Nigerian who enters San Diego illegally by stowing away in the wheel well of a 757.

Much of “San Diego” concerns Daniel’s search for his mother, who left Lagos when he was a child. In the absence of any parental figures, two homeless men – Pious (the outstanding Thomas Helsper) and Innocent (Rick Kopps) – become his “mother” and “father,” doing all in their power to help him assimilate. Daniel, though, has already had all hope squeezed from him.
In his first night in town, Greig encounters this trio’s seamy world, which seals his fate, despite the best efforts of the British airline pilot (David Cramer) who helmed his plane from London to San Diego.

“San Diego” also follows the pilot’s daughter Laura (Melita Ann Sagar), committed to a mental institution in London, determined to cut herself with sharp objects.

A fellow patient named David (Robert Dean Nunez) befriends her. At first just pleasantly batty, this odd little man evolves into one of “San Diego’s” most sane and compassionate figures – the perfect balm for Laura, who yearns for love and answers to life’s mysteries.

As she equates her flesh being gouged with positive attention, Laura’s hunger for human connection is sated by David. Together, Sagar and Nunez render powerful portraits that epitomize Greig’s theme of people surrounded by humanity yet starving for real contact.
So seemingly a cool and collected middle-aged white-collar bloke, Cramer’s airline pilot is unselfish and, beneath the starch, an emotional wreck as adrift as his daughter.

As for the character of Greig himself, Bennett adopts the persona of a soft-spoken, accessibly vulnerable Scotsman with a lilting voice and a fascination with the facts and details of the city of San Diego.

For most of “San Diego,” Bennett is perched above the stage, gazing down upon Greig’s creations. The city depicted here is one you won’t find by venturing down the freeway. It’s at once all big cities everywhere, yet no one city at all.

Freelance writer Eric Marchese has covered entertainment for the Register since 1984.

The shallow shores of San Diego disappoint
By STACY DAVIES
Thursday, September 13, 2007 - 3:00 pm


Life is random—a series of births, deaths, sorrows and sex in which we’re only rarely able to glimpse a translucent thread of connection. When we do see it, for a second, we get the “big picture,” and perhaps we’re momentarily assured that life is not random, that there is meaning or some plan. That’s for the agnostics—for the atheists, it at least shines a glorious light on happenstance.

Stringing together a series of decidedly random events, David Greig’s San Diego is surprisingly unconcerned with showing you that elusive thread. In fact, it’s not elusive at all, with some stories clearly only connected because two characters are related to each other. Okay—but it’s not nearly as fun, and it puts a bit of a damper on the anticipation of seeing that fateful linking. Perhaps Greig’s mash-up is all about the stories then, the tidbits and life snippets we watch, like shiny baubles strung together—on a thread we’re not to be concerned with. If so, then the baubles better damn well be shiny. Unfortunately, some of these just aren’t interesting enough to refract even a dull light.

Instead, Grieg’s melancholy drama skitters along the edge of some proclamation about life that neither seems connected to its San Diego surroundings nor to any larger idea. Rude Guerrilla’s Dave Barton (who also pens reviews for this paper) tries to pump meaning into the deeds and desires of the characters—Scottish David Greig (yes, the author), who flies into San Diego only to get knifed by a Nigerian refugee who stowed away in the plane wheel lock on the same flight; as David lies bleeding to death in an alley, the pilot of said flight and Amy, his dial-a-whore date, try to save his life. This scene is jettisoned for one in which the pilot’s B-movie-actor son, Andrew, finds out his wife has decided to become a nun after giving birth to their first child. The pilot’s daughter, Laura, is introduced as well—as a cutter in a psych ward who, after hacking off pieces of herself, cooks them up and feeds them to her new ADHD boyfriend, David.

While a lot of what happens in San Diego is fairly implausible and over the top—a nun? Devouring your own flesh? (Which led to, of course, an “eating out” scene between Laura and David in which he does exactly that)—going big is less of a concern than the fact that we swim so shallow. Barton does his best with the material, keeping the actors moving through his typically inventive set, and there’s plenty to play with here—whores, planes, cutters, ethnic strife and poverty, criminal acts by police, Paul McCartney songs, all set in the city with one of the highest standards of living and biggest egos. Still, we just couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling that there must be some reason we’re getting to know these particular people at this particular time in their lives. It didn’t have to be a Big Idea; it didn’t have to have serious revelations. But it did have to be a bit more interesting than any of a hundred random conversations we’ve had with strangers at airports. It wasn’t. We are glad, however, that Laura finally decided to give up eating labian appetizers and opted for deli-sliced beef instead. We just wish we knew why she decided to do it now. Yom Kippur?