Theater Reviews : ‘Time’ Makes Present of Future : Erik Ehn’s Bizarre but Haunting Science-Fiction Fantasy Hits the Sledgehammer

“No Time Like the Present” seems an ironic title for aplay set 22 years in the future. It is, until you consider how good the present looks compared to the future that playwright Erik Ehn envisions in this bizarre but haunting West Coast premiere at the Sledgehammer Theatre.

As a young woman, Emily (Sarah Gunnel) comes home from Marymount College on Easter break to visit her divorced parents Ray (Bruce McKenzie) and Bea (Dana Hooley). At the same time, atomic disaster causes changes in the speed of light, throwing time out of whack in a way that Lewis Carroll would have loved.

As past, present and future careen wildly out of sync, the last living physicist (also played by McKenzie) says on video: “You are listening to this interview before I am giving it.”

The play subtly suggests a connection between divorce and the destruction of the world. Suddenly it seems that maybe there is “no time like the present” to address the ills leading us into this twilight zone. Not that anything here is meant to be taken on a naturalistic level.

Ehn, author of a series of plays about Catholic saints, is a smart but difficult playwright resistant to spelling things out. In Sledgehammer Theatre artistic director Scott Feldsher, he has found a director who understands how to project passion through poetically charged abstractions.

Feldsher’s staging and Al Germani’s choreography tell part of the story. On stage, the divorced parents and daughter spin around each other like an atom and then split, suggesting that the fracturing of the family can, like the splitting of the atom itself, set off powerful repercussions.

This context gives pathos to a seemingly absurd subplot in which five sailors, played by five fingers on one of Ray’s hands, steal a sub in a bold attempt to correct the Earth’s rotation.

The trembling fingers “talk” to each other inside a small, detailed diorama. The sailors are literally extensions of himself desperately trying to rectify a situation impossibly bigger than he is.

*

McKenzie and Hooley sharply capture the ambivalence of the divorced couple. Gunnel is the wounded bird, harder to read. But McKenzie, in particular, projects an epic suffering that humanizes all abstractions.

Abstractions can be cold. But they are humanized here by pain, hope and fear, and bathed in the warmth of Francis Thumm’s impressive musical score.

Thumm, a longtime collaborator of Tom Waits, describes his style as “Tom (Waits) meets the Beatles in a Catholic reform school, where they hear the inmates stumbling through a chamber concert of Schubert and Stravinsky.”

That about covers it.

*

Jeff Crane’s set, a melding of bright Christmas-like lights with an askew red bed, as broken as Ray and Bea’s dreams, works well in the dark, cavernous reaches of Sledgehammer’s space, a former church complete with stained-glass windows.

The production, subtitled “A Rosary to Mary Frankenstein on the Occasion of the Rapture,” was commissioned by New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art for a one-time performance.

This reworked version, scheduled to close April 30, is a revelation--a cautionary tale that should be heard more widely in our troubled world.

* “No Time Like the Present,” Sledgehammer Theatre, 1620 6th Ave., San Diego. Tonight, Sunday and Thursday through April 30 at 8 p.m. $10-$15, Students $5. (619) 544-1484. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

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Sarah Gunnel: Emily

Dana Hooley: Bea

Bruce McKenzie: Ray, Scientist

A Sledgehammer Theatre production of a play by Erik Ehn, directed by Scott Feldsher. Music and arrangements by Francis Thumm. Lyrics by Erik Ehn. “Gaudy Dancer” by Thumm and Errol Woods. Sets: Jeff Crane. Lights: Peter Smith. Sound: Jeff Ladman. Costumes: Michael Douglas Hummel, Dawn Vail. Choreography: Al Germani. Stage manager: Beth Robertson.