Theatricum Botanicum takes a break from the Bard in its otherwise entirely Shakespearean 2023 season with Terrence McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh, a play not nearly as appealing as McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, It’s Only A Play, Master Class, Corpus Christi, and Love! Valour! Compassion!

The 1993 off-Broadway drama focuses on two elderly female travelers, Katharine Byrnne (Ellen Geer) and Margaret Civil (Melora Marshall), who’ve decided to leave the comforts of home and embark on a two-week adventure in India.

Despite a decidedly bumpy start (the pair are initially told their plane reservations have been lost, after which mid-flight turbulence sends Katharine into panic mode), the two women do finally make it to India where they are greeted not just by ancient splendor but poverty at its most dire.

Accompanying Katharine and Margaret every step of the way is the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha (Mueen Jahan), who assumes multiple guises throughout the play as does Man (Rajiv Shah), who embodies such diverse characters as an officious Air India ticket agent, an aging hippie, a gay-bashed young man, a doctor with AIDS, and an Indian hotel manager.

Completing the cast is water nymph Apsara (assistant director-cultural consultant-choreographer Shivan Thakkar) who performs several colorful native dances along the way.

McNally gives both Katharine and Margaret powerful back stories (each has lost a son) and enough guilt to drive anyone to despair, in other words reason enough to seek the kind of heeling they each believe awaits them in India.

I might have responded more positively to A Perfect Ganesh (and not found myself frequently consulting my watch) if McNally had made judicious cuts in his three-hour-long play and if a number of fantasy sequences (and too much magic realism for my taste) had not added to the running time.

Not only that, but at least one aspect of A Perfect Ganesh seems somewhat dated in 2023, namely the way it uses two white h eterosexual American women as an audience conduit to a foreign culture, homophobia, and AIDS, i.e., shades of the “white savior” trope.

On the plus side, director Mary Jo DuPrey displays a terrific sense of the visual, aided by set and properties designer Ian Geatz, lighting designer Hayden Kirschbaum, costume designer Vicki Conrad, and ensemble members Sam Brock, Jessica Libero Edwards, Craig “Linc” Lincoln, Liza Rash, and Anthony Soliz, and Charles Glaudini’s evocative sound design transports us to a foreign land as only music can.

DuPrey’s extensive use of the hillsides surrounding the Theatricum Botanicum stage is particularly imaginative, though staging several sequences at its far extremes (a pair of scenes set in an airplane and on a train for example) means that anyone seated on one side or other of the theater might have difficulty seeing and hearing what’s happening way over on the opposite side.

Marshall does powerful, subtle, deeply felt work as Margaret (no surprise there), but for this reviewer at least, Geer’s Katharine is played so overwrought from the get-go that there’s nowhere to go but over after starting out at the top.

Jahan is effective as Ganesha, though it can be tricky trying to determine which character the Indian god is inhabiting given that Ganesha remains masked and costumed exactly the same throughout the play.

Cast standout Shah, on the other hand, excels at distinguishing between the accents, body language, and attitudes of the many characters he plays, not the least because unlike Jahan, Shah has the advantage of being able to change hairstyles and attire each time he assumes a new identity.

Shalini Bathina, Sharayu Mahale, and A.M. Sannazzaro are understudies. Karen Osborne is stage manager and Alex Penner is assistant stage manager. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

 A three-hour running time isn’t reason enough for me to give a play thumbs down, not if it’s as captivating as McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion!, for example, and in its favor, the Theatricum Botanicum production is quite often a visual stunner.

Still, for this reviewer at least, less of A Perfect Ganesh would have added up to more.

Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga.
www.theatricum.com

–Steven Stanley
August 13, 2023
Photos: Kevin Hudnell