By Robert St. Martin
Topanga Canyon, California (The Hollywood Times) 07/30/2023 – On Saturday evening I drove out to Topanga Canyon to the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, a lovely outdoor theater venue in the woods in the heart of Topanga Canyon. There I saw a production of Terrence McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh, a play from 1993 about two older American women who travel to India on a vacation that is really an attempt to deal with their own sense of loss and need for spiritual healing.
The play takes its name from Ganesh (or Ganesha), the benevolent, elephant-headed Hindu god who has the ability to be everyone and everywhere. Fluid in his power to assume any guise, at peace with all things, Ganesha – God of wisdom, prudence, acceptance, love and “remover of obstacles” – is the spiritual center around which the play spins. Directed by Mary Jo DuPrey, A Perfect Ganesh captures the essence of McNally’s incrimination of American prejudices, superficiality, and “New Age” desire for spiritual healing.
The play focuses on the nature of female friendship, while addressing racism, homophobia, trauma and loss, and our collective search for wholeness and authenticity in a chaotic world. In this play, McNally humorously skewers the orientalist, colonialist stereotype of the Western traveler seeking to find solace by going to India, rather than simply facing themselves in their own existences. It is no coincidence that the two older ladies who travel to India literally carry too much baggage, expecting things to be as they imagined and end up misreading most of their experiences in India. Of course, the play predates the use of the internet and cell phones and the India of A Perfect Ganesh represents a mythic India that appealed to people who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s.
A Perfect Ganesh was a finalist for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize, preceding by one year McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion! that played Off-Broadway in 1994 and transferred to Broadway in 1995. Many of us are familiar with Joe Mantello’s 1997 award-winning dramatic film version of Love! Valour! Compassion! “That addressed the impact of the devasting HIV/AIDS crisis on the gay community. I suppose the play now feels a bit dated, but it is a fine showcase for the acting talent which in this Theatricum Botanicum production stars sisters Ellen Geer and Melora Marshall, who bring brilliant energy to their roles as travelers in search of deeper spiritual healing in India.
Narrated by Ganesha, Hindu god of “wisdom, prudence, acceptance and love,” it is the story of two friends, Margaret Civil (Malona Marshall) and Katharine Brynne (Ellen Geer), who explore their differences, life-tragedies, and opinions during a healing trip to India. Ganesha (Mueen Jahan) accompanies the women through a series of exhilarating moments and profound experiences in a climate and culture that is completely foreign to the two travelers. Katherine Brynne and Margaret Civil have decided to travel alone to India without their husbands or grown children. Each is, in her own way, seeking to heal from the death of a son. While exploring its cities (with the goal of reaching the Taj Mahal), they encounter the elephant-headed Hindu god, Ganesha. However, Ganesha is not just a single entity, but exists in many people they meet.
We first see Ganesh perched on a rooftop above the theatre where he explains his myriad abilities which include omnipresence and shapeshifting. Katharine thinks that she even sees him outside the plane at 40,000 feet in air. In some scenes, Ganesh appears to take on both male and female roles, in a way before the term “non-binary” was in vogue. He represents for a moment the lost lover of Katharine’s gay son, the deep loss that she harbors inside herself while refusing to understand or accept his sexuality when her son was alive. Once the two female travelers arrive in Mumbai, they disagree about many petty things, but Katharine is adamant about going down from the 5-star hotel to India Gate to mingle with the ordinary people who sleep in the street at night.
Margaret, being a stiff New Englander, has no interest in the seeing the poverty and dirt of the streets of Mumbai. Both misread what they see and experience – being lost in the baggage of their own lives. Of course, Ganesh is there, seeing and hearing both of them – and occasionally interceding in one of his many disguises to interact with them. As a god of love and a remover of obstacles, Ganesh becomes their travel companion. He also takes on the role of narrator in the play.
A Perfect Ganesh dates to the early 1990s and AIDS was a scourging presence. Katharine has lost her gay son (who does tell her that he is HIV+) to another scourge, a violent homophobic beating, and must make peace with the role her own anti-gay sentiment played in her son’s short life. Margaret is carrying her own dark secret related to a young lost son early on in her marriage. The two ladies are not comfortable talking about their losses, but these specters hang over them heavily, as the play wanders from farcical comedy into the realms of tragedy.
The ladies are following an itinerary on their two-week trip through India that will lead them to Jaipur in Rajashan to Varanasi and the ghats on the river Ganges, with the end point being Agra and the Taj Mahal. More importantly, it is the god Ganesh who accompanies them as their travel guide and sometimes just a fellow traveler from the USA. Rajiv Shah as Ganesh seamlessly transitions between several roles, but all wearing his elephant headpiece. Particularly moving is how he takes on the role of Katharine’s gay son at several points in the play. All along their journey, Katherine is busy buying miniature statues of Ganesh, hoping to find “a perfect Ganesh” as her favorite souvenir.
There is a fourth major character in the play, a man (played by Rajiv Shah), who – like Ganesh – takes on different roles in the play. So, in a way, he is a double of Ganesh. He is a fellow traveler in India and keeps running into the two ladies at various tourist places in the country and even on a train from Jaipur to Varanasi. At times, he is their tour guide; at other times, a disgruntled American from Boston whose wife hated India and already left early to go back to the U.S. Like Ganesh, he suddenly becomes Katherine’s son for a brief spot in time and in another magical moment the early love interest of Margaret. Ganesh is a god who can play with our memories of the past and so he does here in an effort to help these two older women deal with their long-harbored pain and closemindedness. But also, Ganesh is most “perfect” when he brings humans to greater awareness of themselves despite their failings.
In the production I saw on Saturday, Shivani Thakkar performed as a Hindu apsara (in the place of Shivani Thakkar). This aspera or female spirit performs some ethereal dances at key junctures in the play. An additional cast members serve to accompany her at times and add to the very Indian flavor of the performance. Especially striking is the human puppet show staged by Ganesh for Katherine to help her understand how Ganesh got his elephant head.
I recommend this play as a moving production of Terrence McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh. It will probably be most touching for those of us who lived through the AIDS crisis and some of us who trucked off to India in search of similar self-discovery in a pre-internet era. Although India has changed hugely since the 1990s, there is much to be learned from this play and its well-acted performances by a remarkable cast.
Actress Ellen Geer is the daughter of actors Hera Ware and Will Geer. Her father was best-known for playing Grandpa Zebulon “Zeb” Walton on The Waltons. Geer began her film career appearing as a nun in the 1968 Richard Lester drama Petulia. She followed this with an appearance in 1969’s The Reivers with her father, Will Geer. In 1971, Geer played the deceased wife of the lead character in Kotch, appearing throughout the movie in flashbacks. That same year, she is a supporting role in the acclaimed comedy Harold and Maude. In 1974, she starred in two films which she also wrote: Silence and Memory of Us, both of which featured her father. The remainder of Geer’s 1970s career consisted primarily of guest appearances and made-for-television movies. Television series on which she appeared during this time included Police Story, The Streets of San Francisco, Baretta, Barnaby Jones, Charlie’s Angels and Chip’s.” Melona Marshall is Ellen’s half-sister and has been a consistent and luminous presence on the Theatricum Botanicum stage. Melora Marshall is known for her film roles in Picket Fences (1992), The Diary of Anne Frank (1980) and Profiler (1996).
The winner of five Tony awards, Terrence McNally wrote plays, musicals, operas, teleplays, and even a memoir. In 1964, he put homosexuality squarely on the stage with his controversial play And Things that go Bump in the Night. 1993 brought The Perfect Ganesh to off-Broadway and also gave McNally a Tony award for his musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman. Next came McNally’s moving Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994) which captured the world of gay men during the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s. McNally persisted and thrived with musicals like Ragtime in 1997 and The Full Monty (with David Yazbek) in 2000. McNally had a good life until 2020, and then he died of COVID-19. Thus, the twin tragedies of AIDS and COVID converged – making A Perfect Ganesh an appropriate choice for today’s audiences.
A Perfect Ganesh runs through
Oct. 7, with 11 remaining weekend performances, see https://theatricum.com for specific dates and to purchase tickets. A prologue (pre-show discussion) is scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 10 from 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Visit the website for a complete schedule of performances. Tickets are $30 $48; premium seating is available for $60. Pay What You Will ticket pricing (cash only at the door) is available for the performances on Friday, Aug. 4 and Friday, Sept. 1. Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum is located at 1419 North Topanga Canyon Blvd.