‘To Greenland,’ Shepard’s Way

Stages in Fullerton is one of Orange County’s more interesting small theaters. It is determined to present new plays by local playwrights and its work is always intriguing. Joel Beers’ “Going to Greenland” is interesting, but not for the usual reasons.

It harks back to a bygone era, the late 1960s and the work of the early Sam Shepard. Even Shepard has tried to erase the memory of those young plays he wrote in a period when “wild and crazy” was considered avant-garde and logic went begging. Illogic was Shepard’s style, and Beers has copied it to a T.

Dante, who is really Danny, opens the piece in a hospital gown, grinning ear to ear, as a nurse slips a pill in his mouth, washes it down with water and rubs his throat to coax the medicine down. Dante sinks into a hallucinogenic world where his dream begins to be fulfilled. He suddenly appears in a sort of late-hippie gathering, with a small band playing country-western, folk-type tunes and equally drugged figures undulating and wandering about our hero.

It suddenly seems that Dante must go to Greenland, to climb a mountain, to “find” himself. He drags into his company Virgil, a sort of stick-in-the-mud type, and Bernice--”Bernice” is close enough, for this Dante, to “Beatrice.” They hop in Virgil’s car and start driving from Orange County north, determined to climb that elusive mountain in Greenland.

Shepard once said his writing method was intuitive. I’m stuck, he might say; what would an actor do now? OK, I’m an actor, and I’d like to come out now naked, covered with a bearskin. That’s how his youthful plays were written and that seems to be the way Beers has written this piece. Very little of it is logical, but then, of course, it’s a hallucination. What is persistent in Beers’ writing is what he confesses in the program to a great dredging of material from several late poets and from, naturally, Dante Alighieri. This Dante’s journey is through an inferno of oddball characters purportedly being from humanity’s inferno, lost souls who can’t find their true place in the eternal plan.

The main problem with this dated approach is that it has little to do with character and everything to do with sophist philosophizing. The best example is Spider Madison’s long, dull monologue in the second act as Noah, a half-Inuit Indian who harangues the audience about the purpose of life--a standard early Shepard shtick--but finally leaves the impression that he’s an ort from a Shepard snack that’s been forgotten for three decades.

It’s intriguing that Stages had the courage to bring Beers’ play to the public. If the material had been something new, it would deserve a medal. As a glance back at a discredited era in theater, it’s merely interesting. Director Patrick Gwaltney has the technique and wisdom to keep everything moving as swiftly as possible, even though he allows a couple of performances to shriek. But perhaps that was to cover the naivete of the philosophizing.

Nick Boicourt Jr.’s Virgil is the most controlled performance and is effective even in those tedious moments when he’s merely narrating the simplistic tale. Teresa Marie also has some sharp moments as Bernice, but has little to do dramatically most of the time. As Dante, Bradley A. Whitfield grins effectively and shouts loudly, but Beers has deprived him of any solid core to build on, other than camp.

Darri Kristin has a delightfully funny few moments as a hitchhiker the trio picks up, doing an acrobatic psuedo-strip in the back seat of the car as she blathers on about nothing, but Steven Lamprinos’ Prince, who finally steals the car from Virgil and heads for Greenland, shouts most of his lines with little interest in whatever meaning there might be in them.

* “Going to Greenland,” Stages, 400 E. Commonwealth, Fullerton. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. Through April 14. $12. (714) 525-4484. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.