STAGE WEST: Vantage Theatre's "Best Laid Plans"

Blake Stadnik (left) and Richard Trujillo in "Best Laid Plans."                                 Photo by Steve Murdock

            Inside the program handed out at the 10th Avenue Arts Center downtown for performances of the Vantage Theatre production of “Best Laid Plans" is a card furnished by the San Diego Center for the Blind that’s embossed with the braille alphabet and numbers used by the sightless.
            That tells you how seriously those behind this world premiere play take showing us how the blind learn to read in a different way, how to use numbers, how to adapt to a world without visuals.
            In many ways, Robert Salerno’s drama about a young architect who loses his sight after an operation to remove a tumor from his brain is a series of lessons in re-learning how to live. Under the tutelage of a visiting nurse named Moses (Richard Trujillo), the devastated Lucas (Blake Stadnik) is taught how to use a cane, how to navigate unfamiliar and potentially dangerous spaces, how to go about everyday tasks that before he took for granted and, most of all, how to call upon his other senses to compensate for the loss of his sight and, ultimately, to even enhance the life he leads after the surgery.
               But there’s more.
         In short order, Moses becomes the incarnation of none other than Ludvig von Beethoven himself, the master composer who lost his hearing and yet created some of the most timeless classical music in history afterward.
            “Best Laid Plans,” a welcome directorial return from Sam Woodhouse, would be compelling even without the Beethoven conceit. The growth of Lucas psychologically and physically, his acceptance of his condition and the bravery he demonstrates in rising above it are inspiring and performed with dignity and commitment by Stadnik, who is visually impaired.
            Having Beethoven – in period clothes and wig – on the scene to teach and motivate Lucas turns labored and platitudinous at times. But Trujillo, who told me in an interview for the San Diego Union-Tribune that this is the role of a lifetime for him and who has a hearing disability, is a powerful and irresistible force.
             The question of whether a suddenly blinded architect can continue his career, one posed early in the story, is unfathomable, seemingly unanswerable.
             That there is an uplifting answer, that the “best laid plans” can be re-planned and not lost, is this new work’s payoff.
            The first act in particular runs longer than it should and a showdown scene with Lucas’ blustering former employer ridiculing and interrupting like Donald Trump in mid-debate could use some toning down.
            Otherwise inspiring are sequences of recorded music from Beethoven’s peerless and beautiful canon. Intermittent use of projections also contribute to the scope of this mostly two-handed production. (Steve Murdock and Lee Ann Kim appear in smaller roles.)
            Salerno’s play is based on a news story he read about a real-life young architect who became blind, Chris Downey. No wonder that “Best Laid Plans” feels so authentic and will elicit such serious thought and empathy from an audience.
           As I walked to my car after the opening night performance, I toyed with the notion that perhaps Beethoven wasn’t really there, in Lucas’ life. That maybe Moses pretended to be Beethoven as a strategy to get through to Lucas, to move him. Or was the Beethoven “character” never there at all – Lucas found the strength and courage  in himself to restart his life?
            Only playwright Salerno knows for certain. But it doesn’t matter, really. The truth is that human beings are resilient and inherently courageous beings, and that at times we all need help from someone else – even from another lifetime – to show us the way.
            “Best Laid Plans” runs through Sept. 22 at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center downtown.