It’s Long, It’s Loopy, It’s Shaw

Witnessing the Los Angeles Repertory Company’s nearly seven-hour, two-part version of the rarely seen “Back to Methuselah,” a couple of words come to mind. Nice try.

While one would like to applaud the erratic, huge effort, the 31-member cast clearly did not have the time or resources--but particularly the time--to make interesting George Bernard Shaw’s loopy, occasionally brilliant history of mankind from the Garden of Eden to the year 31,920.

On Thursday (opening night for Part 1) and Friday (opening night for Part 2), actors seemed uncertain of their lines in virtually every scene. Technical bloopers abounded, as did unintentional comedy. With no one completely sure what was going to happen next, the play was filled with a kind of suspense. Pacing was anyone’s guess. One scene found a man and woman staring at each other until, after a pause, the man finally said, “Hold your tongue!”

Even under the best of circumstances, this five-plays-within-a-play work is odd. Shaw began the play in 1918, while the Great War still raged, and finished it in 1921, when he was 75. “Methuselah” is driven by the playwright’s concerns about his own mortality as well as for the future of the race, and also by Shaw’s pronounced suspicion of all things physical.

The play is Shaw’s road map for mankind, but it is an eccentric guide. After providing fairly entertaining scenes of Eden and jumping forward to a British household in 1922, he then advances far into the future. In a kind of blissful mood, he imagines a way out of the muck of war and sexual entanglement. Shaw imagines that, beginning at the time of his writing, certain people will find a way to will themselves to live longer and longer. He bases this particular view of utopia on the theory that we are all babies, or idiots, for roughly the first 100 years.

Individuals in the new breed at first live to be 300, and they hide their true identity from the masses, who live normal life spans. Then, as the new breed ages to 1,000 years and older, it begins to take over the Earth and develops decreasing patience for the asinine behavior of the short-lived. The short-lived become a vanishing and unnecessary people, along with their quaint ideas about war and love and sex and art. Shaw imagines a world in which the most highly evolved reach “a vortex freed from matter,” one that is pure intellect.

The play has been described as hopeful, but that is arguable. Shaw suggests that to better our lives, we must become something unrecognizable as human.

Director Robert Ellenstein, thankfully, does not bring too much reverence to this play. He allows for goofiness--the intended kind. The familiar Shavian types in the 1922 scene come off especially well. As a cantankerous scientist, William H. Bassett bears a striking resemblance to Shaw, or at least his beard does, and he has a regal bearing to go along with it. Kent Minault and Jacob Witkin are both very funny as rival, but equally fatuous, politicians. Despite her cumbersome costume, Jill Remez is also good as a sexy, intense serpent from the Garden of Eden. In the final play, Elizabeth Reilly strikes an otherworldly (if a bit “Star Trek”-ish) note as a woman so long-lived she can hardly bear to hear the prattle of the young.

In the largely boring second half, one scene achieved lyricism. An elderly gentleman (Bassett) has come to see the Oracle at a temple in Ireland. She (the nicely astringent Emily Chase) is a long-lifer who dispenses advice to bungling, dimwitted, short-lived tourists. He decides to stay with her rather than return to the land of lying, petty short-lifers. She takes pity on him and holds him in her lap. Given Bassett’s resemblance to Shaw, the scene has a sad, eloquent quality and an efficiency that is missing from the rest of the evening.

These are but small bright spots in the sea of Methuselah, a play that may well leave you feeling like a long-lifer, lost in a vortex with no bodily sensation. “Methuselah” represents a classic case of a theater company that bites off quite a bit only to be caught still chewing on opening night.

* “Back to Methuselah,” Evidence Room, 3542 Hayden Ave., Culver City, Parts 1 and 2 are presented separately, Tue.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., Part 1, 2 p.m.; Part 2, 7:30 p.m. Indefinitely. $20 (Parts 1 or 2); $35 (both parts). (213) 658-4098. Running time: Part 1, 3 hours, 40 minutes; Part 2, 3 hours, 15 minutes.