Too Many Ghosts Haunt ‘Baggage’

Ken Narasaki’s “Ghosts and Baggage” at Los Angeles Theatre Center’s Theatre 4 is billed as a neurotic comedy but plays as an unfocused piece with multiple personalities. Part romantic comedy, part social diatribe and part dramatic examination of middle-age angst, it attempts to be too many things and ends up an unsatisfying mix.

Sara (Sharon Omi) is the divorced owner of a New Age bookstore who falls into lust with a customer, Oliver (Francois Chau). Oliver has some anger-management issues that verge on racist hate directed at white America. Sara has ceased to take her medication so that she may conjure up her Spirit Guide (Sab Shimono). Sara and Oliver have an overwhelming load of emotional baggage, making the Spirit Guide the voice of sanity.

Narasaki couldn’t resist further complicating this already schizophrenic story by adding issues of child abuse, domestic violence, and race hate. Most of these themes are merely introduced, then dropped into oblivion.

Director Alberto Isaac never achieves a feeling of a unified whole and instead plunges wholeheartedly into the disjointedness of Narasaki’s indecisive script. Chau, Omi and Shimono draw finely nuanced portraits. But all their efforts are stymied by the incongruous switches between genres.

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* “Ghosts and Baggage,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theatre 4, 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends April 19. $18-$15. (213) 485-1681. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.