STAGE REVIEWS : ‘The Swan’ Surprises With a Modern Myth of Love

You might say that Elizabeth Egloff’s “The Swan,” the second play in the La Jolla Playhouse FutureFest, is a bird of a very different feather. Like the first play, “Marisol,” it is a modern fable with unusual twists that require heavy-duty suspension of disbelief. But next to “Marisol’s” blast from hell, “The Swan” is an Olympian breeze.

What starts out as a spoofy comedy about a swan crash-landing in a Nebraska wheat field outside nurse Dora Hamm’s window transforms into something rich, uplifting and strange.

The big bird’s unceremonious arrival is a major event in Dora’s life. She’s a lonely woman with a history of failed marriages and romances who becomes obsessed with her untamed feathered friend. This doesn’t exactly thrill her current boyfriend Kevin, a married milkman who may not be the world’s brightest guy, but who can’t help noticing that this swan is turning into something that looks remarkably like a man.

So much so, that Dora names him Bill, feeds him pizza and tries to teach him to play checkers. Bill’s puppy-dog goofiness tears up the house while Kevin’s blood pressure rises and Dora decides to quit her job so she can focus more on her obsession.

These are the antics of pure comedy, but Egloff has more in mind than a mere “Harvey” spin-off. If Zeus could turn into a swan and swoop down to Earth to embrace his Leda, why couldn’t Bill do the same with Dora? That’s exactly where this “Swan” is headed.

Bill is an earnest contender for Dora’s affections and Kevin is not wrong to view him as a rival. What was funny, suddenly becomes haunting. An unlikely tall tale turns into an unexpectedly moving love story. And Egloff’s literary command of the language and unlabored poetic flights make the transformation happen by acceptable degrees. We’re as surreptitiously, and as willingly, carried aloft as Dora.

The experience is like watching two plays in one: the earthly knockabout comedy of the beginning gradually giving way to the mystery and soaring lyricism of the end.

Director Lisa Peterson lashes the two together by suggesting the presence of the supernatural at all times. Pivotal action is punctuated by John Gromada’s crashing sounds, John Martin’s flashes of unnatural light--or the silhouette of actor Michael Harris as the undefinable swan, staring at the sky in the huge window that dominates Robert Brill’s set.

Joseph Urla’s earthbound Kevin is an apoplectic foil for Susan Berman’s harried Dora, whose complacency becomes increasingly distracted by the extraterrestrial love that gradually invades her being. But nowhere is the contrast of the mystery and the mayhem more bound up than in Harris’ swan/man. His performance careens from impulsive animal playfulness to something unknowable, primeval and wild.

Egloff bridges such improbable transitions linguistically. Past and present are linked by an evocative stream of language--epic references to purity, to flight, to breaking through ice and climbing through snow, to defying the law of gravity and being lost inside one’s body and yearning to be free.

The content is not exactly novel, but its form is highly original. By the time the play is over, there’s a sense of having witnessed not only the birth of a tremendous love affair but of having run headlong into the metaphysical essence of love itself. The release is a tonic for jaded expectations.

“The Swan,” La Jolla Playhouse, Mandel Weiss Forum, La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road, UC San Diego campus. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Plays Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, next Saturday, Oct. 1-2, 4, 6-7, 10, 15-18. Ends Oct. 18. Runs in repertory with “Marisol.” $23.75-$29.75; (619) 534-6760, TDD/Voice (619) 534-0351. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Susan Berman: Dora

Joseph Urla: Kevin

Michael Harris: Swan

Director Lisa Peterson. Playwright Elizabeth Egloff. Set Robert Brill. Lights John Martin. Costumes Janice Benning. Sound and original music John Gromada. Fight director Steve Rankin. Dramaturgy Elissa Adams. Stage manager Paul Jefferson. Assistant stage managers Lori M. Doyle, Kimberly Fisk, Peggy Sasso.