‘Mary’ needs a bit of independence

It’s a time of change, yet she can’t seem to rouse herself from stasis.

On campuses and in the streets of 1968 San Francisco, people are challenging old ways of doing things. Beautiful, volatile Eiko, however, has just married the safest guy around and, though just back from her honeymoon, is already miserable.

“You’re bored, aren’t you?” a gentleman friend of the family asks through a creepy, Cheshire Cat-like grin.

Yes, but the conflict goes much deeper. Substitute the name Hedda for Eiko, and perhaps you already know something about this woman’s deep-freeze of the soul, for the protagonist of “The Wind Cries Mary” is a latter-day reincarnation of Hedda Gabler.

In its Los Angeles premiere at East West Players, Philip Kan Gotanda’s riff on Henrik Ibsen is tantalizingly cerebral. Unfortunately, the head is where it remains; it never gets blood pumping through the rest of the body.

Ibsen’s 1890 drama, about a woman suffocated by social convention, translates well to the late 1960s and a nation that didn’t want its “Oriental” population to act Asian yet wouldn’t fully accept it as American.

Eiko, born in Japan, is stirred by the nascent civil rights activism in her community, yet she has spent years trying to become as American as possible. When the tide of her times comes rushing along, she resists it -- a failure of courage that proves disastrous.

Gotanda -- a regular presence at East West with such Chekhovian family dramas as “Fish Head Soup” and “Sisters Matsumoto” -- has been too meticulous in copying Ibsen, however. Along with the fervor of the original, he has picked up much that is now considered old-fashioned and melodramatic. Lisa Peterson’s cold, formal direction compounds the problem.

The compensation: riveting portrayals by Jodi Long as Eiko and Kelvin Han Yee as the former lover whose fire for change she can only envy -- and try to extinguish.

Long, who wowed Los Angeles as the sophisticated, vivacious manager-promoter in the Mark Taper Forum’s “Flower Drum Song,” is mercurial here. By turns seductive, demanding, wounded or conspiratorial, Eiko usually gets what she wants from others, if not from herself. At Wednesday’s opening, Long telegraphed much of this in an awfully calculated way, but perhaps, as the run progresses, she will settle into subtlety.

Yee’s Miles -- once an antiwar firebrand, now devoting that passion to race issues -- is charismatic.

If he could give the same speeches in public that he does in Eiko’s stylish living room (a symbolic blend of East and West, astutely designed by Rachel Hauck), he might truly propel people to action.

The majority of plot points are lifted directly from Ibsen. Hence the creepy older gentleman (Sab Shimono) who understands Eiko all too well and the ominous introduction of an heirloom knife, substituting for Hedda’s pistol.

Intriguingly, though, Gotanda has married Eiko to a Caucasian (Thomas Vincent Kelly), which raises interesting issues as Eiko runs up against her husband’s earnest attempts to adopt her culture and his dizzy family’s clumsier, unwittingly offensive attempts to do the same.

The hubby is a sweet guy, if awfully stuffy. His idea of rock ‘n’ roll is We Five. Eiko’s is Jimi Hendrix, whose mournful “The Wind Cries Mary” gives the play its title. Weeping for what it can’t have, it’s a potent soundtrack for this tragedy.

*

‘The Wind Cries Mary’

Where: David Henry Hwang Theater, Union Center for the Arts, 120 Judge John Aiso St., downtown L.A.

When: Thursdays and Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m. (except no matinee this Saturday); Sundays, 2 p.m.

Ends: Feb. 29

Price: $28 and $33

Contact: (213) 625-7000, Ext. 20

Running Time: 2 hours, 25 minutes

Jodi Long...Eiko

Thomas Vincent Kelly...Raymond

Sab Shimono...Dr. Nakada

Kelvin Han Yee...Miles

Jamila Abdullayeva...Rachel

Diana Kay Cameron...Aunt Gladys

Presented by East West Players. Written by Philip Kan Gotanda. Directed by Lisa Peterson. Set Rachel Hauck. Costumes Christopher Acebo. Lights Rand Ryan. Sound Robbin E. Broad. Stage manager Victoria A. Gathe.