SAN DIEGO COUNTY : STAGE REVIEW : Drag Out Welcome Mat for ‘Eden Court’

Welcome to Eden Court, a terribly ordinary trailer park on the border of Virginia and Maryland where the beers are plentiful and so are the mice, marijuana and marital disagreements.

“Eden Court,” by Murphy Guyer, debuted at the Humanas Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville six years ago. The touching comedy now comes to the Hahn Cosmopolitan by way of the Tamarind Theatre in Los Angeles, which is co-producing it with the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company, Fat Boy & Sticks Productions and Kate Axelrod.

Throw out the welcome mat.

Guyer’s first and perhaps greatest stroke of genius here is his name for the park and play. “Eden Court,” a poignant reference to life before the fall from paradise, expresses longing for the perfect existence, in harmony with people, nature and God.

If the rest is not genius, it does penetrate both the heart and head, with humor saving the pathos from descending into bathos.

Paradise is a dream that Schroeder (Scott Allan Campbell) has all but given up as he approaches his 30th birthday. If most people are living lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau said, then the eerily quiet Schroeder is among the most desperate.

He labors at a job he hates to make money. Then he goes to a bar after work where he spends the money to forget the job. He has lost whatever faith in God he might once have had; he figures that Moses came up with the Ten Commandments to keep the Jews from killing one another in the desert, and God--if He does exist--has probably created creatures so much superior that man is no better than a bacterium in a universe where his intelligence is far outstripped by that of the creatures in the UFOs.

Don’t have a clue as to what Schroeder is complaining about? Neither does his wife, Bonnie (Deborah Scott). But she has her suspicions. If he’s tuning her out, and continues to refuse to have a baby with her, it must be because he’s seeing another woman. So she cries and escapes into a world loaded with Elvis memorabilia.

It’s fitting that Elvis Presley himself was an addict, hooked on pills, liquor and food. Everyone in Eden Court escapes into some kind of addiction to blot out the fear that their lives are pointless.

Bonnie divides her worship between Elvis and the church. A cross rests on her doorpost. Cluttering every other space in Barry Frost’s funny/sad set design are likenesses of the King, from guitar lamps to towels, ash trays, throw pillows, photographs and, of course, the omnipresent music, which plays during and between the acts.

Schroeder’s drugs of choice are grass and beer. Bonnie’s best friend, Barb (Stephanie Shroyer), a single mother who sports leg-hugging leopard tights, prefers hard liquor. Ditto Schroeder’s friend, Carl (Tim deZarn), who divides his energy between drinking and chasing women.

Trouble runs too deeply in stories like these for happy endings; the one false note here is that Guyer tries to tack one on. If there were an epilogue, it seems certain the solution that ends the play would prove painfully fleeting as the lies used to build the truce collapse under the test of time.

In the meantime, Guyer proves that even sad lives can, from moment to moment, be very funny. “It’s high time women started taking care of themselves,” Bonnie tells Schroeder as she hands him a jelly jar to open. “You got no standards,” Schroeder says to Carl when Carl admits that he’ll sleep with anybody. “Sure I do,” Carl says. “They’re low, that’s all.”

The cast clings to the frequent one-liners--as people so often do in life--as lifesavers in turbulent, emotional waters. But, under Robert Spera’s sensitive direction, they never forget that the water is cold, the current is strong and we are all so close to drowning.

Campbell’s pain and confusion as Schroeder seem genuinely overwhelming. Scott is tall, vulnerable and never more piquant than when she dresses up in a baby doll nightie to surprise her husband and wears it with knee-length sweat socks. And deZarn is perfect as the bowlegged, pot-bellied Carl who can keep you laughing until you push him too far--then you realize that, on a deeper level, he’s smoldering too.

Only Shroyer’s Barb seems off the mark. She looks every inch the brassy broad in Miki Kim’s gaudy costume design, but her quiet, modulated voice seems out of sync with the flashy presentation.

Brian Faul’s light design gets lost in making the transition from Eden Court’s long day’s journey into night. And that reflects some of Guyer’s own missteps in both deepening and resolving some of the intriguing questions and conflicts he poses here.

Bonnie’s and Schroeder’s families are alluded to, without being talked about. Bonnie’s obsession with Elvis is not really explored (although she should be happy to learn that, on opening night, the Gaslamp reserved two seats for Elvis--just in case).

“EDEN COURT”

By Murphy Guyer. Director, Robert Spera. Set, Barry Frost. Lighting, Brian Faul. Sound, Michael Killen. Costumes, Miki Kim. Stage manager, Dwight Callaway. With Deborah Scott, Scott Allan Campbell, Stephanie Shroyer and Tim deZarn. At 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, with Sunday matinees at 2, through Aug. 26. At 444 Fourth Ave., San Diego, 234-9583.