STAGE REVIEW : ‘Search, Destroy’: There’s Poison in American Dream

Search for the American Dream. Destroy yourself in the process. Search for achievement. Destroy the meaning of the word by hitting on the wrong definition. Search for your soul. Find it in pieces.

These are only three of a dozen ways to interpret the title of Howard Korder’s “Search & Destroy,” at South Coast Repertory, not the least of which is the literal one: A radical military maneuver that leaves only ashes behind.

But not so fast. There is a play to be experienced first. And what a play. From the moment the lights go up on Martin Mirkheim, our Small Man with a Big Dream, we know where we are. He’s trying, in desperate half-sentences, to explain to an immutable IRS auditor why he has failed to file taxes for three years. What’s an unpaid $91,000 to the government when what you’re after in life is making a mark, becoming a somebody, leaving something behind?

Like a movie maybe. The hallmark of the age. Martin doesn’t convince the tax man, but he sets off on a quest to make it all come out “right.” If it means being on the lam, with a passel of lies, a hope and no money, well, that’s just salsa for the American Dream.

Cut to Dallas, where Martin is after the film rights to a book about self-realization, the rule he lives--and falls--by. Never so hard as when he finally meets the rapacious bully who wrote it. Martin comes out of the encounter shaken, yes, but undeterred. This Candide displays signs of extreme nervousness when he ends up penniless in a Trailways depot in Utah instead of home in his condo in Boca Raton. But, hey, what’s a glitch on the Yellow Brick Road? Remember Dorothy. Remember Oz. Time to call Kim.

Cut to a New York City high-rise and an office with a desk as big as Texas and a view as wide as the smile on the Cheshire cat. Martin met Kim at a party. Kim is suave. Kim doesn’t talk much. Kim is watchful. Kim deals drugs. In high places. Wanna raise money for a movie? Here’s where Martin makes his pact with the Devil. And Candide becomes Faust.

Don’t second guess the rest of this plot. It’ll fool you. It’ll also keep you on the edge of your seat. Its evolution, shot through with brilliant gutter language, is vintage stuff, arresting and real. The American Dream has curdled, in this gospel according to Korder, and few of us will fail to recognize the evidence. It’s all around us, from the billion-dollar devastation of the savings and loans to the Billionaire Boys’ Club; from the Wall Street Willies to the Pentagon Procurement Peccadillos.

It’s impossible not to compare Korder’s language here to David Mamet’s, but only in an effort to impart a sense of its flavor. The words are Korder’s alone, as is the play. And director David Chambers has mounted a blistering production, with a crisp succession of sardonic images that stick in the memory--none more compelling than the last, when the lights go down on a hollow, haunted Martin, sitting alone under the poster of “Dead World,” the movie he finally has made. Like the cockroaches, he has survived.

The cast is splendid, headed by Mark Harelik as the fundamentally craven, half-cocked Martin, off on his quasi-evangelical quest, and by Philip Anglim as the enigmatic, unflappable, sexlessly humanoid Kim. Quite a pair of traveling companions. Anthony Forkush, Jarion Monroe, Anni Long, Deirdre Taylor, Art Koustik, Dom Magwili, Hubert Baron Kelly and Vic Trevino do yeoman duty in a variety of roles, with Forkush a crackerjack as a fast-talking dealer named Ron.

Rarely has a production come together as seamlessly as this one, from Chambers’ brisk direction and the fine acting to the sleekness of Chris Barbeca’s scenic design complemented by Chris Parry’s cool lighting and David Budries’ chilling synthesizer score.

Visually, we have a sparsely furnished stage with panels on the back wall that slide open on high-rise panoramas or breathtaking vistas of cities at night, the distance masking out all murderous impurities and the appearance of affluence covering up the moral poison in the blood. It beautifully serves a play that urgently identifies and exposes our cultural atrophy by persuasively sifting through our cultural junk to do it. An altogether extraordinary achievement.

At 655 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa, Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m .; Sundays, 7:30 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends Feb. 18. Tickets: $21-$28; (714) 957-4033).