Unplanned Obsolescence

Photo by Kristen AutryAn invigorating trip back in time, Andrew Marshall's Panat the Long Beach Shakespeare Co.—which Marshall also directed—finds the once-mighty, still-proud, soon-to-be-dead Olympian god sequestered with two nymphs in an Oregon cabin.

It's a nice premise: Pan (Chris Eann), goat-legged, -horned and -hoofed, is becoming obsolete and faces extinction. He's been supplanted in the realm of spirituality by Jesus Christ (Keith Bush) and in the realm of materialism by Diamond Jim Brady (Dylan Seal), both of whom are pleased to remind him of his irrelevance. Sensing something's amiss, he flees Arcadian Greece, blind and impotent, to an Oregon cabin with nymphs Fernande (Susanna Levitt) and Francoise (Stephanie Terronez) in tow. There, in a series of flashbacks punctuated by an often-cruel, sometimes-enchanted memory, he recounts a life of unbridled lust and wisdom, emotional carnage and forgiveness.

At times rapturous, at times demonic, always compelling, the play brims with energetic dialogue, pathos and visuals that rivet us to our seats. Eann's Pan is beguiling; passionate and irreverent, he snarls at us, as if we're the guilty party (we are). He leers iconoclastically—like Jon Lovitz impersonating Popeye. He lurches about like a caged animal, cornered: no fool but still not believing what's happened to he who once ruled the world.

Seal's Brady—pompous, portly, pretentious and smug—and Bush's Jesus—holier-than thou, dogmatically intransigent—show what we've done to Pan: we've broken him up into components, half Dionysus, half Apollo. Both Brady and Jesus are guilty of hubris, disrespect of the gods.

Levitt's Fernande, growing old with a tottering old man (think Katherine Hepburn in OnGoldenPond), turns in a superb performance, suffering from what appears to be Alzheimer's but able to mollify symptoms with feathers she's collected from such notable figures as Icarus. I also really liked Terronez's Francoise: she opts for profane, not sacred love, and falls for Bob (Matteo Faeth), the grocery delivery man whom she will teach a thing or two.

Though Pan'slonger soliloquies tend to drone on, this is an innovative script. Daring and fresh, it's enacted with a passion that reminds us that while it may not be nice to mess with Father Nature, it certainly makes for good theater.

PAN AT THE LONG BEACH SHAKESPEARE CO., BLACK BOX THEATRE, 4250 1/2 ATLANTIC AVE., LONG BEACH, (562) 997-1494; WWW.LBSHAKESPEARE.ORG. THURS.-SAT., 8 P.M.; SUN., 2 P.M. THROUGH AUG. 27. $10-$12; THURSDAYS, TWO FOR ONE.