Existential journeys

THE title character of Julie Marie Myatt’s “My Wandering Boy,” like Godot, is a no-show. But unlike Beckett’s classic, there’s no doubt that Emmett, the 30-year-old free spirit who one day wandered into oblivion, once existed. We’re shown pictures of him as a baby. We’re given descriptions of him by his girlfriends. We even meet his dog.

Yet it’s hard to say that anyone really knew the guy. His identity remains a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. What becomes slightly clearer over the course of Myatt’s meandering drama, which had its world premiere Friday at South Coast Repertory, is the ambivalent nature of everyone’s attachment to him. The absent Emmett becomes a Rorschach test for friends, lovers and family. As you might expect, what we learn from their responses isn’t always flattering.

It’s a tantalizing idea for a play, rich with psychological and existential possibility. Let’s hope Myatt, an L.A. playwright with a growing reputation, eventually gets around to writing it. What she offers at this point is merely a dramatic treatment for a future effort. Scenes are outlined but rarely convincingly filled in. The characterizations are mostly two-dimensional. And the story idles for long stretches without much payoff.

Ironically, for a work about the lure of the road, there’s little drive to the action. But then, Myatt has challenged herself to write a play in which confrontation between characters (the soul of drama, according to some) isn’t allowed to build toward anything momentous. Instead, we get small squabbles yielding bits of insight, which we’re then supposed to fit into the overall puzzle. Lucky us!

Suspense as a theatrical value has long been out of fashion. But can someone please explain what happened to dramatic interest? Surely, a playwright can’t abandon that as well. After all, what else is going to keep us awake, forget about on the edge of our seats?

It’s a rare theatrical poet (Beckett is the chief example) who can plotlessly shape language and gesture into revelatory vision. The skill required is daunting. Myatt’s writing has a few shining moments, but too often there’s a banality to the chatter. The web she weaves doesn’t captivate us with its lyricism.

The only thing to entice us along is the question of what happened to the apparently irresistible Emmett. Is he dead or alive? Happily holed up with a new girlfriend or in a state of nomadic amnesia? Walking along a beach or sunk a few miles down in the ocean?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long to guess that an answer isn’t forthcoming. And that as much as Myatt wants to complicate our relationship with this figure, she can’t help romanticizing him in hackneyed terms.

Detective Howard (the excellent Charlie Robinson) has been hired by Emmett’s parents to find out where their son has vanished. Howard is a retired policeman-turned-private investigator, a polite, no-nonsense married man who doesn’t dabble in comforting sentiments or illusions. The first thing he uncovers is a pair of Emmett’s boots. John (Brent Hinkley), a homeless man, has already claimed them and only reluctantly hands them over. This might seem like a promising lead, but ultimately, the shoes are only a symbol, just as Emmett’s diary, which is also in John’s possession, mythologizes the disappearance rather than accounts for it.

Liza (Elizabeth Ruscio) and Wesley (Richard Doyle), Emmett’s mom and dad, seem like ordinary middle-class folk, but their parental concern has a sharp, self-interested edge. Wesley, a loudmouth bully, bemoans having paid a fortune in tuition to his son’s college only to see him become a drifter, while Liza lets on that the inheritance Emmett has come into from his grandmother is an awful lot of money for one young man not to share with his family. It’s no wonder their son has left no forwarding address.

Emmett’s girlfriends from various parts of the country claim that they fully accepted his transient ways, but Howard, hard on the case, doesn’t seem all that convinced. He presses Miranda (a poignant Veralyn Jones) to acknowledge some anger over Emmett’s refusal to care for the baby they had together, yet it seems that her loneliness had been so complete that the child is enough for her.

Sally Wright (Purva Bedi), Emmett’s younger and feistier lover, is more overtly angry. She slept with his friend Rooster (John Cabrera), the buddy who now has custody of his dog, out of a morass of only partly conscious vindictive feelings. In one of the play’s more memorable speeches, she wrestles with her frustration and guilt: “You know there’s all this great stuff in there, and occasionally, you get a peek at it -- just big enough to keep you wanting more; a question no one else has asked you before, a sweet note, a look, a hug that lasts longer than you thought it would. But he won’t let you have the rest, and you begin to hate him for hoarding the good stuff ... “

The material is fertile, and the production, directed by Bill Rauch, expansively draws out the larger themes, particularly the American obsession with the road as captured by Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac and those other chroniclers of our national restlessness.

Christopher Acebo’s stunningly executed set design provides a background of mountains, sky and seductive if lonely freedom. Subtly incorporated video (apparently, Emmett was an amateur documentary filmmaker) of families strolling along public beaches and cart-pushers moseying through urban blight extends the visual palette.

But the drama is MIA. One could describe the work as a string of monologues interrupted or provoked by the detective’s inquiries. An unfortunate consequence is that the actors, forced to generate so much on their own, sometimes rev up the histrionics at the expense of truth.

charles.mcnulty@latimes.com

*

‘My Wandering Boy’

Where: South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays

Ends: May 6

Price: $28 to $60

Contact: (714) 708-5555 or www.scr.org

Running time: 2 hours