STAGE REVIEW : ‘Animal Nation’--All Bark and No Bite : Theater: The world premiere of an Orwell-inspired drama is a well-intentioned but muddled tale at San Diego Repertory Theatre.

The cow dreams of being a giraffe. The chicken dreams of being a rhinoceros. The horse dreams of being a wild boar.

And “Animal Nation,” a world premiere at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, may dream of being a play. Desperately. Earnestly. But, alas, unsuccessfully.

“Animal Nation,” the final offering of the Rep’s premiere-laden season (presented in collaboration with the Dell’Arte Players Company), is as well-intentioned and beautifully designed and performed as most of the theater’s 1989 shows. And just as muddled.

Just what is Steve Friedman’s script about? That’s a good question that Jael Weisman’s and Sam Woodhouse’s co-direction fails to answer.

At first it seems to be an animal rights play in which two pigs, a chicken, a cow, a sheep, a stud horse, a Doberman and a new DNA seven-way splice animal form, called a Webelo, escape from an animal laboratory called BioTech Farms, in which they have been tortured and tested to the extreme.

Then it veers into a False Messiah tale as the animals, who have chosen the Webelo as the creature to lead them out of the darkness, are ultimately betrayed by him and by the DNA tampering process that made him.

In a complicated marriage scene, suggestive of nuns and priests marrying Jesus and the Church, the animals hook up electrically to the dying Webelo, hoping to pull part of what they worship into themselves. But at the moment the charge passes into their bodies, the Christ figure becomes an anti-Christ--literally a giant rat--passing on some kind of grand lobotomy rather than liberation.

And then we’re into “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in which one lone pig, who escapes the operation, runs off only to try, unsuccessfully, to talk the other lobotomized pig into joining her.

“Could you make it simpler?” asks the horse at one point. Ah, there’s a note somebody should have slipped to the writer.

Sad to say that nothing can save this show from the whirlpool of its own confusion, not an excellent acting ensemble or Gina Leishman’s attractive, quirky score or Victoria Petrovich’s handsome set design that transforms the claustrophobic lab into an airy meadow in a matter of moments.

The actors are aided immeasurably by Nancy Jo Smith’s costumes and Rob Watson’s masks and makeup in their uncanny animal impressions. Bernard Baldan is exceptionally fine, prancing on his high-hoof shoes as the horse; author Friedman and Joan Schirle do a wonderful waddle in the mud as the pigs; both Regina Byrd Smith as a vulnerable sheep and Tracy Hughes as a funky chicken add lovely singing voices to the mix, and Joe Dieffenbacher does a delicious bit as the smarmy Doberman that no one wants to pair with.

Donald Forrest is compelling as the Webelo--but neither he nor Friedman nor Weisman nor Woodhouse ever seem to figure out what motivates the Webelo to do any of the peculiar things it does. Maybe that’s OK if you’re Iago, but this script isn’t Shakespeare.

Like the Webelo, the story is so lost in the thicket of its ideology--whether it’s pro-animal or anti-science or social/religious allegory or whatever--that it commits the cardinal dramatic sin of never delving into characterizations. George Orwell, the social critic who wrote “Animal Farm,” one of this play’s initial inspirations, knew how to make you care for the faithful workhorse and fear the conniving pig.

Instead, what passes for character development here is that a pig falls in love with the horse because the horse is “big” and the horse is taken with the pig because she has such an “intricate” tail.

Ironically, the play is revealed as a Webelo that splices so many different influences, that it defeats its author just as surely as the Webelo in the play defeats the animals.

Nobody is knocking animal rights, but what about audience rights? Maybe it is too much to expect a play that is comprehensible, but a play about animals that doesn’t even touch the heart? This is an unviable dramatic mutation.

At 79 Horton Plaza, San Diego, Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., Sunday matinees at 2 p.m., through Jan. 20. Tickets: $14-22; (619) 235-8025 .

‘ANIMAL NATION’

By Steve Friedman. Directed by Jael Weisman and Sam Woodhouse. Score, sound and musical direction by Gina Leishman. Lyrics by Steve Friedman. Sets by Victoria Petrovich. Lighting by Peter Nordyke. Costumes by Nancy Jo Smith. Mask and makeup by Rob Watson. Choreography by Joan Schirle. Fight choreography by Donald Forrest. Stage manager is Julie A. Moore. With Steve Friedman, Joan Schirle, Tracy Hughes, Priscilla Allen, Regina Byrd Smith, Bernard Baldan, Joe Dieffenbacher, Donald Forrest and Bruce McKenzie.