By Pat Launer
Three guys walk into an operating room: a drug-addled dentist, a surgeon who faints at the sight of blood, and a con-man who’ll do anything for a buck — and a little fame.
These are the point-men in the development of ether as a surgical anesthetic. It’s kind of a hair-raising story, and it has fascinated playwright Elizabeth Egloff for some time. But she hasn’t yet found a way to tell it.
“Ether Dome,” making its West coast premiere at La Jolla Playhouse (in collaboration with the Alley Theatre, Hartford Stage and Huntington Theatre Company) is a classic case of a writer doing so much research, and falling so much in love with the many facets and side-stories of her tale, that she can’t let any of it go.
So there’s a soporific, 90-minute first act that’s almost entirely exposition — with entirely too much medical-dental pain and gore depicted. (Trust us; we get it after one screamy example).
Nothing much happens, and then, in the second act, too much happens. There are too many digressions, so there’s nowhere for us to focus, since Egloff hasn’t decided on her own focus. She doesn’t seem to have determined whose story this is: the well-meaning dentist, Horace Wells who, thanks to experimentation with various inhalable compounds, turns out to be the prototype for Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but who was the first to suggest the use of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) to mask pain. Or is it the queasy surgeon, Charles Jackson, a brilliant thinker/inventor who first conceived of the medical use of sulfuric ether? Or should we devote our attention primarily to the relentless uneducated confidence man, William Morton who, having been a protégé of both Wells and Jackson, passes himself off as a dentist, and then a doctor, and markets the use of ether at Massachusetts General Hospital, thereby initiating the commercializing of medicine?
They’re all great stories, with the addition of wives and fantasy women and an enigmatic abundance of astronomy and paleontology. Two suicides and one mental breakdown ensue from this fraught chapter of medical history. But who do we follow or root for? What’s the takeaway? Or is this just the didactic history lesson it appears to be in the first act? As one fellow theatergoer quipped, “Till she got to the heart of the story, it was like pulling teeth!”
In any event, Egloff needs to go back to the drawing board, and ruthlessly toss extraneous details, and decide if this is a story about medicine, honesty, loyalty, indomitability, the competitive nature of research, medicine as hubris, altruism, ambition or Big Business. Or something else.
Even the projections were shaky on opening night — literally. The costumes (David C. Woolard) are period-apt (18xx) and the scenic design (James Youmans, also responsible for the projection design) effectively suggests the operating theater at Mass General (still called “the Ether Dome”). The lighting (David Lander) and original music (John Gromada) contribute nicely.
The cast of 14 is versatile and capable. The most effective scenes are those with highly emotionally charged interactions, as opposed to the more pedantic explications. Less telling, in other words, more showing; less history, more drama.
- “Ether Dome” runs through August 10, in the Mandell Weiss Forum on the campus of UC San Diego
- Performances are Tuesday-Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday-Saturday at 8 pm; Sunday at 7 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.
- Running Time: 2.5 hours
- Tickets (starting at $15) are available at 858-550-1010 or online at www.lajollaplayhouse.org
Pat Launer is a long-time San Diego arts writer and an Emmy Award-winning theater critic. An archive of her previews and reviews can be found at www.patteproductions.com.
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