STAGE WEST: "Empty Ride" at the Old Globe

            It’s been said that in Ishinomaki, a Japanese town ravaged by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and its resulting aftershocks and tsunamis, that drivers of taxis encountered ghost passengers in the back seats of their cabs. This is the point of exploration of Keiko Green’s world premiere “Empty Ride.”
            The one-act play at the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre is the product of a Globe commission and appears a year after it was workshopped at its annual Powers New Voices Festival. Green’s “ghost story” as she has called it is a thoughtful and mostly understated reflection on what’s left behind after death, and on that thin line existing between this world and the next.
            For a ghost story it’s not especially scary, nor does it bid to be. “Empty Ride” has its sudden, startling shocks, most of them invisibles facilitated by Avi Amon’s sound design, Mextly Couzin’s lighting and an anxiety that accompanies driving a taxi at night through unfamiliar streets, or simply being in the dark. That anxiety is heightened by the deliberate pacing forged by director Sivan Battat.
            As with any effective storytelling apt to chill the spine, “Empty Ride” relies upon what we don’t see rather than what we do.
            That these disturbances come in a theater-in-the-round  with ostensibly nowhere to hide is part of the ingenuity of this staging.
            The taxi driver in “Empty Ride” is young Kisa (Michele Selene Ang), an artist from Paris, who has returned to her hometown of Ishinomaki five years after a tsunami all but leveled it and in the process swept away her mother. Her father (Jojo Gonzalez) is weak and very ill and still consumed by grief. Kisa dons a cab-driving uniform and takes over his one-man business – after having been instructed to transport fares only in the daylight hours.
            The fiercely independent Kisa departs from this advice soon, and it’s by night that she hears if not sees things she cannot explain, things that rattle her to the core.
            A figure, if not a ghost, from her past enters the picture when in picking up a fare, Kisa rediscovers Toru (Major Curda), a young man with whom she may or may not have been romantically involved. There is room for doubt. Beside Toru and completely in charge of him -- and seemingly everything around her -- is his sister Sachiko (Jully Lee), a real estate pro who seeks to revitalize the devastated town, and to make lots of money while she’s at it. Part of doing so will directly impact Kisa and her father, adding another layer of conflict to what might or might not develop between Kisa and the eager, likable Toru.
            Playwright Green’s other character is an American, Alex (David Rosenberg), who lives next door to Kisa’s father and has been looking after him – nowhere near to her satisfaction. Alex has been given a monologue articulating what he swears was being haunted by the unseen in Ishinomaki.
            To recount how this all plays out would be to spoil “Empty Ride’s” denouement, one not entirely unexpected but nevertheless lovely and contemplative.
            Of note is how the illusion of a taxi in motion is accomplished in this show; it’s as if somehow in this confined space we’re in the back seat of Kisa’s cab ourselves.
            Ang’s genuinely human performance is equaled by Gonzalez’s, though he has far less stage time. Curda’s Toru tamps down the cockiness at just the right junctures. Lee’s character is the broadest, though this establishes an important contrast between brother and sister, and, in their own confrontation, between Kisa and Sachiko.
            In spite of his harrowing ghost story, the Alex character feels the least essential – that’s no slighting of Rosenberg’s portrayal.   
            A story at first simple but quickly vast and searching, “Empty Ride” is further demonstration of the prodigious Green’s imagination and perceptiveness. It’s also quite a ride.
            “Empty Ride” runs through March 2 on the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Stage in Balboa Park.

PHOTO OF MICHELE SELENE ANG BY RICH SOUBLET II