My friend Jessica and I never expected to end up in Southern
California. We both grew up on the East Coast; I'd always imagined a 5
th
floor walk-up in my future, or a haunted Victorian
with bay windows and lots of nooks. But now we each live on canyons, with lots
of glass and light. & Jess has a fire pit,
for pete's sake. & We don't have fire pits
back east. & We have fires in barrels on
neighborhood corners, but no one drinks martinis standing around those.
I figured & ldquo;Sea of Tranquility, & rdquo; at The Old Globe Theatre, was a fitting play for us to see on Friday night. It's playwright Howard Korder's (the Globe's Playwright-in-Residence) comic take on the persistent belief in the transformative powers of the West. &
Jess and I have recurring conversations about where we live; it's our way of finding meaning here, a way of grafting our ideas of ourselves onto this still new and different place. & The main characters in & ldquo;Sea of Tranquility & rdquo; seek the West as a way to escape the past. What they find out, of course, is there is no escape.
Ben (Ted Koch), a psychologist, and his wife, Nessa (Erika Rolfsrud), sell their Connecticut home and relocate to Santa Fe, New Mexico. & When we first meet Ben, he's in therapy with an older lesbian couple and a Jewish boy who has taken up the Nazi cause. His swastika-wear is a laugh offered in lieu of exploring the boy's anger at his mother's newfound sexuality. & I like the humor, but I would have preferred some insight into how his world has turned upside down.
We meet a number of Ben's clients throughout the play; in fact, there are fourteen characters in Sea of Tranquility. & I felt like I was watching a series of vignettes that are supposed to tie together, but I couldn't find the thread. Ben is the link, but a weak one. & As a therapist, he's the impetus for revelation from others, so when we're later expected to make sense of his emotional life, I didn't know or care enough about him. Actor Ted Koch does what he can with Ben, but the character is thinly drawn. & In fact, he's more of a foil for the other characters and for Santa Fe itself. &
