Haze Obscures the Landscape in a Troubled ‘Wonderland’

America can’t help itself. It’s a selfish lover, especially attractive to those new to its embrace. It offers up fake images of its real self, courtesy of the movies, saying: Come and get it. Then a few years go by, dissatisfactions roil, and we realize what the movies meant all along: Just kidding.

That’s the view of playwright Chay Yew. It’s a good start for a drama about otherness in America. Yet this one’s oddly frustrating.

In “Wonderland,” a revision of his 1996 drama “Half Lives,” the Los Angeles writer deals in painful family matters within an abstracted realm of autobiography. He’s writing about America in general, and, in particular, what it meant to his increasingly disappointed and finally devastated parents.

The young man in “Wonderland” grows up in that carrot-and-stick show-biz contraption known as L.A. He is shunned by his parents for his homosexuality, reduced to turning tricks and acting in porn before regaining his sense of self.

You don’t want a neater, cleaner version of this story. You want the opposite. Even in a lovely La Jolla Playhouse staging, Yew’s impressions don’t cohere.

The playwright has written far better plays than this one, but here he hasn’t found a way to put his unresolved feelings toward his parents to effective theatrical use. The play lacks the thorny, troubling texture of thorny, troubling memories.

Like so many in recent years, this fictionalized memory play uses its authorial voice to sing a duet. Often seated on stage in a director’s chair, the Young Man (Joel de la Fuente) watches his younger self (Alec Mapa) in childhood years. The Young Man directs his own life, coordinates the action, relaying the story in filmic terms. “Smash cut/That same night/We find ourselves in the heart of heartless Hollywood,” goes one transition. The cinematic device is not the freshest.

We first meet Man (Sab Shimono), an Asian American businessman in Singapore, in 1965. He begins an affair with Woman (Tsai Chin). They eventually relocate to Malibu together. And then along comes Son (Mapa).

The fictional Wonderland of the title is the father’s creation. Father is an architect, whose specialty is the newly fashionable strip mall; downtown L.A.’s Wonderland is his peak achievement, though it crashes down around him, literally and metaphorically. The strip mall serves as a handy, if obvious, symbol of American crassness and commercialized togetherness.

In Act 2, the play shifts its focus to the son. Shunned by his parents, he takes flight and becomes an L.A. near-casualty. Then at the coda we learn the play has been told in consciously cinematic terms for a reason: We’re at a pitch meeting, where the Young Man is pitching to his unseen boyhood friend (and first love), now a movie producer, married with kids. Another L.A. closet case; another hypocrisy; another dashed hope. Yew constructs “Wonderland” as a series of hopes dashed.

His earlier, stronger plays include “Porcelain” and “A Language of Their Own,” in which the writing--jabbing, rhythmically sharp sentences setting a scene or building tension--worked well for their investigations of love in all its layers. Here, writing close to home appears to have vexed Yew. He gets lost in a haze of description, along the lines of “the sun’s invisible golden rays shimmering, glimmering, dancing on the restless sea.” As a through-line Yew utilizes the mother’s obsession with Elizabeth Taylor movies--the American Dream personified. (Their Malibu home is called “The Sandpiper.”) Yet like the notion of strip malls as American soullessness incarnate, this feels overly familiar.

The sole problem with director Lisa Peterson’s production is Mapa’s portrayal of the Young Man as a young boy. He’s all petulance and unmodulated rage. His cohorts, however, acquit themselves superbly. Chin, who (like Mapa) originated her role in the 1996 East West Players version of the earlier draft, gives the mother wonderful shadings of resentment, flirtation and empathy. Shimono lends the father great, if wounded, dignity. De la Fuente is stuck with the usual narrator chores, but he’s ingratiating.

It’s an exquisitely designed production. Scenic designer Rachel Hauck, a regular at Actors’ Gang, provides a wood-paneled stage, a row of chairs and a small rectangular window surrounded by a white wall, drawing our eye to the Pacific Ocean beyond. It’s a brilliant, clean-lined image of a California dream. Geoff Korf lights it beautifully, bringing out the aqua tones, and Joyce Kim Lee’s costumes travel the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s with dash and wit.

Director Peterson and her designers have done all they can for “Wonderland.” Playwright Yew may have lived with this one too long. “Porcelain” and others prove he’s an interesting, consciously poetic voice. On to the next play.

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(Wonderland)

* “Wonderland,” La Jolla Playhouse, Mandell Weiss Forum, UC San Diego, North Torrey Pines Road at La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays,2 and 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 17. $19-$39. (858) 550-1010. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Tsai Chin: Woman

Joel de la Fuente: Young Man

Alec Mapa: Son

Sab Shimono: Man

Written by Chay Yew. Directed by Lisa Peterson. Set by Rachel Hauck. Costumes by Joyce Kim Lee. Lighting by Geoff Korf. Music and sound by Mark Bennett. Stage managers Peter Van Dyke, Tom Aberger.