STAGE REVIEW : It May be Hip but Why Bother and Who Cares?

SAN DIEGO —  At one point in Bruce McKenzie’s performance of the Mac Wellman monologue “Terminal Hip,” he asks, “Why Russia? Why Brooklyn? Why lard?”

He might as well ask, “Why ‘Terminal Hip’?”

Not that the answer to this question or any other comes in this mind-numbing ode to incomprehensibility at Sledgehammer Theatre’s new permanent home, St. Cecilia’s (formerly known as the San Diego Rep’s Sixth Avenue Playhouse).

What is anyone to make of a play that begins: “Strange the Y all bent up and dented/Blew the who to tragic eightball/Eightball trumpet earwax and so forth.”

And so it goes . . . for 45 minutes.

“Terminal Hip” purports, as an interview with Wellman has it, to be an exploration of American speech.

Sure. That and what Wellman describes as his “desperate search for meaning.”

Keep looking, Mac.

Some critics in New York must have bought into all this. The show did win an Obie. Just thinking about what that says about the competition can give you the wellies--I mean, the willies.

But what it really seems to be is an emperor’s-new-clothes exercise, with Wellmanian nonsense masquerading as profundity.

There is just one semi-redeeming feature in this West Coast premiere--and that’s McKenzie.

McKenzie delivers all of his lines--from nonsense to non sequiturs to fragments of semi-sense--with such quick-tongued naturalness that it actually seems as if he’s creating it as he goes along.

His interpretation seems to be that of a man who is cracking up. He makes jokes of some of it, exhibits fear at other points (references to pandas, for some reason, seem ominous), and seems desperate to communicate something throughout.

Like the proverbial actor who can make a recitation of the phone book compelling, he draws well-deserved applause for a remarkable performance; at the same time, one wishes that such talent had been expended on a worthier object.

Still, the production does offer consistency, if nothing else. McKenzie’s interpretation, and that of director Scott Feldsher (who is also artistic director of Sledgehammer), is well-supported by Sledgehammer’s as usual top-quality technical design.

All this contributes to an atmosphere far more provoking than anything in the script.

Vince Mountain’s set, a giant blackboard crammed with scribbled mathematical equations, is as askew as the narrator’s perception of the world, with one corner piercing right through the stage.

And through one crack in the blackboard (like the crack in the narrator’s reasoning), Ashley York Kennedy’s lighting design shines through like inspiration in a fog. Pea Hicks’ sound design helps set the almost jaunty, manic mood in which McKenzie relates the piece.

But this interpretation is not what leaves the lasting impression.

Overheard as the audience filed out was a comment that said it all: “I can’t believe he memorized all that!”

And that, in the end, is what this show offers. Not laughter, not tears, not an emotional or cerebral shakedown, not a new perspective of yourself or the world we live in.

What you get is an actor, supported by a skillful staff, who pulls off a fancy trick. This is Sledgehammer’s debut show in its first permanent space. For sustained growth, the company will have to dig deeper than this.

“TERMINAL HIP”

By Mac Wellman. Director is Scott Feldsher. A one-man play with Bruce McKenzie. Set by Vince Mountain. Lighting by Ashley York Kennedy. Sound design and composition by Pea Hicks. Costume by Kathleen King. Stage manager is Lisa NoelleStone. Tickets are $10-$15, with a pay-what-you-can performance Thursday. Performances at 8 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, through July 5. At Saint Cecilia’s, formerly the Sixth Avenue Playhouse, 1620 6th Ave. Call 544-1484.