By Eva Trieger
LA MESA, California –Producer Pamela Stompoly really knows how to pick ‘em.
Lamplighters Community Theatre in La Mesa is currently staging a heart-rending provocative show that challenges our beliefs and makes us examine the ways in which we guard our hearts from giving and receiving love.
These self-imposed barriers inhibit so many relationships from communicating honestly with lovers to parenting to opening up to friends.
The Perfect Gnash, written by Terrence McNally, follows the life-altering sojourn of two women, friends (or are they merely acquaintances?) as they step far outside their comfort zone to explore India’s magical, spiritual and transformational aura. Both of the women, Margaret Civil (Lana Hartwell) and Katharine Brynne (Michelle Burkhart) hold secrets, harbor guilt, and desperately seek a way to create a bridge to healing. In this quest, they are helped, perhaps unwittingly, by the Indian deity, Ganesha (Parth Kichloo).
Jennifer Peters’ direction of four gifted actors provides intimate, honest glimpses into the struggles humans experience in the wake of loss and the pain that hindsight often provides. The two American women discover how to check their “first world” expectations as they observe abject poverty, temporary dysentery and encounters with Indian nationals and other tourists. Their experiences leave them altered and perhaps improved, and certainly more authentic and empathetic.
The two-week India adventure reveals vulnerability, resilience, love and intimacy that these women had not known. Through interactions with Man (Raymond Evans) the women discover facets of themselves of which they may not have been aware. Ganesh is the constant character, demonstrating all that exists and all that is possible. At times he is comical while at other moments, delivers tragedy or pain. Yet, in every moment, he is constant and stays with the women as they metamorphosize into their new forms.
Author Terrence McNally was an American playwright as well as a screenwriter. He won five Tony Awards, an Emmy and several other awards before he passed in 2020 from COVID. Thanks to McNally, we have been gifted Kiss of the Spider Woman, Ragtime and Love! Valour! Compassion!
The Perfect Ganesh will run through March 23 and tickets may be purchased at www.lamplighterslamesa.com or by phone at 619.303.5092.
*
Eva Trieger is a freelance writer specializing in the coverage of the arts.