THEATER REVIEW : Two San Diego Plays Take a Look at Death

Most creatures kill to survive or to assert territoriality. What distinguishes humans in this regard is that we use our ability for abstract reasoning to kill for more complex concepts as well. And then we brood endlessly about why the deeds were done.

Certainly there seems to be a fascination with murder on San Diego stages right now, from the North Coast Repertory Theatre’s “Devour the Snow,” a story of cannibalization that distinguishes, delicately, between the guilt allotted to different types of murder, to the Lamb’s Players Theatre’s “Saint Joan,” a story of the inevitability of martyrdom.

These shows find parallels in two new entries on the scene: “The Strong Breed,” a West Coast premiere of a play by Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, and “Sweeney Todd,” a San Diego State University production of the Stephen Sondheim opera about a vengeful barber who kills customers that his resourceful partner, in turn, bakes into meat pies.

Both plays spin their cloth from the dark threads of the human soul. “Sweeney Todd” is a fully realized, deftly produced tale of the ironic way revenge returns to one’s own door. In contrast, “The Strong Breed,” the initial San Diego project of the year-old Plus Fire Performance Group, is more fragmentary in concept and execution. But like “Saint Joan,” “The Strong Breed” offers a provocative and philosophical take on why people sometimes end up killing the best among us.

Much in the spirit of Robert Woodruff, whose direction of “The Tempest” for the La Jolla Playhouse last year transformed the Shakespearian classic into a Third World power struggle, director Barlett Sher (who has worked as an assistant director for Woodruff) has taken Soyinka’s African tale of warring tribes to a mystical place where whites, blacks and Hispanics clash.

“The Strong Breed” takes place during a New Year’s festival where a community is looking to purge their ills through the ritualized murder of an outsider. The first one the highly charged white teen-age-types seize on is a crippled, drooling black man named Ifada. The drama begins as Eman, a gentle Hispanic teacher, volunteers to take Ifada’s place, only to run and try to hide from the gang until past midnight, the deadline for the killing to occur.

Unfortunately, the leads in this 18-person cast are not quite up to the heft of the material. Andres Nonreal is too gently bland to convey the passion of Eman. Similarly, Dana Hooley fails to be moving as the woman who urges him to flee the evil she suspects ahead, as her hysteria comes across more as anger than as loving despair. In smaller roles, Tomas Querphya skillfully moves from the tragic, grunting Ifada to an unctuous tutor, while Carla Kirkwood is chillingly mesmerizing as an ill woman clutching a dummy that she believes can take her sickness from her.

Rob Murphy, who designed the detailed, exploded mind for the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s “Six Women with Brain Death or Expiring Minds Want to Know,” here favors the most abstract simplicity in surfaces. Rising from a dirt set at downtown’s Installation Gallery is a network of white monkey bars which suggest at one two-dimensional end a door and window of the teacher’s house (the floor is lined with books that cannot save him) and at the other a box where a sad-faced man in a suit--the conscience of the play?-- paces back and forth until the story is played out to its tragic conclusion.

Murphy’s lighting design, a smoky mix that moves from the glare of the hunt to glowing dreamlike memory sequences is, at every step, enhanced by the hypnotic composition and sound design of Peter Still: the beat of drums, a tinkling of bells, the shudder of wind through chimes. If complemented by stronger performances in the future, the lingering thrust of the music and imagery augur well for this new group.

Performances of “The Strong Breed” at 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, through May 28, at the Installation Gallery, 930 E St., San Diego.

If “The Strong Breed” is dramatically demanding, “Sweeney Todd” poses an almost intimidating challenge vocally, theatrically and scenically. The current show at the Don Powell Theatre, the last of the San Diego State University season, is remarkable in the way it delivers on all three levels. Not only is it the school’s best show this year, it is a fine show by anyone’s standards.

At the center of the show, in the title role, is guest artist Randolph Messing. Messing, an experienced actor and operatic singer who is also a member of the drama faculty, is striking as the self-appointed avenger of a corrupt society that robbed him of his wife and daughter.

Under the skillful direction of James C. Christian, he emerges as the center without overpowering the supporting cast. In the critical role of Mrs. Lovett, his partner in human pie-making crime, Sandra Wells (who will be alternating the role with Pamela Denning as the Beggar Woman), succeeds in not making us long for Angela Lansbury, who originated the role on Broadway. While Wells’ voice is not big, it is strong and pure and as an actress she shows a delightful knack for milking the dark comedy inherent in the role.

Some of the cast is admittedly green. As Sweeney’s daughter and her young lover, Christina Stevens and Anthony Hope display stronger voices than acting skills; Hope’s acting is in fact more firmly in place when he is singing as in his stirring delivery of the love song, “Johanna.” But Jim Tompkins-MacLaine is wonderful as the pleasantly amoral Beadle Bamford who conspired with Judge Rupril (nicely done by Roy Cepero) to frame Sweeney years ago.

Terry O’Donnell’s musical direction seems to bring the best out of all the voices, from the solos by Michael Detroit who sings the addle-brained Tobias’ sweet “Not While I’m Around” to Matt Alexander as the oily competing barber, Pirelli. Similarly, the ensemble work is powerful stuff, bitterly clipped in the delivery.

What makes the production so striking is that it is long on style but never sacrifices the gritty grim realism of Dickensian London that makes the tragedy work on a gut level. Mark Anderson’s set design serves the work at every turn, facilitating as many as three levels of action at once with an elaborate mix of mobile screens and revolving sets moving as smoothly as Mrs. Lovett as she grinds her gruesome meat for the pies.

At one point Anderson has as many as three levels moving at once--exquisitely--from a weeping Johanna in her bedroom to the villains plotting on the bridge in the distance behind her, to the shadow of Sweeney, behind them lurking in the shadows of his barber shop.

The costumes by Stacey Rae are beautifully textured in their dinginess. And the sterling power of this production glistens right through it all.

Performances at 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday , through May 21, at the Don Powell Theatre, San Diego State University.