Owiso Odera received South African playwright Ian Bruce’s script of “Groundswell” on March 11, and the young actor-on-the-rise was word perfect in previews beginning the following Tuesday and leading up to opening night on March 17, said Old Globe Executive Producer Louis G. Spisto. Like many alumni of the University of California, San Diego’s highly ranked three-year Master of Fine Arts theater program, Odera has been busy with stage and television roles since his graduation in 2005. He was in the midst of a pilot season when he got the call informing him that the originally cast Mfundo Morris had left the company. Spisto said show director Kyle Donnelly and Globe management ousted Morris. Donnelly, who has an excellent feel for the taut, suspenseful “Groundswell,” heads the university’s MFA actor training program, so there is a strong connection to be savored in what’s happening now at the Old Globe. She staged the Globe’s award-winning “Opus,” among others. Odera is already a Globe veteran, having played Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet” during the 2008 Shakespeare Festival. “Groundswell” concerns three men who come together at Garnet Lodge, a beachfront guest house in a small port town on the west coast of South Africa. Because it’s off-season, the inn’s owners have left their trusted employee Thami (Odera) in charge. Having left his wife and children behind, Thami came to the town originally looking for his father, who had disappeared. He goes to work for the inn’s owners and picks up the occasional raw diamond and sells it illegally, or as he says, “informally.” The government has opened up seven diamond parcels along the coast. Thami and his ex-con friend, an Afrikaner diamond diver named Johan (Antony Hagopian), aspire to a parcel even though they don’t have the funds to qualify. The alcoholic Johan is devious, volatile and hell-bent on extracting, by whatever means necessary, needed funds from the inn’s sole guest, Smith (played by the excellent Ned Schmidtke). Smith stumbled upon the Garnet Inn thinking there was a golf course nearby. In truth he is a rudderless, forcibly “retired” investment broker with some means. Conveniently for Johan’s purposes, Smith is a widower whose children, like so many Afrikaners, moved elsewhere rather than endure the social and political chaos that followed the ending of Apartheid. Tension builds as Johan goes about his nefarious purpose. As each man reveals his story, he becomes representative of an archetype in South African history. All are disenfranchised. All struggle to find a purpose and a handhold in the new society. It’s a fascinating play with extraordinary acting. As usual the Old Globe’s supporting elements, visual and aural, are excellent. Scenic designer Kate Edmunds creates the 100-year-old inn, which features rough-hewn furniture and décor reflecting the coast’s flora and fauna. Denitsa Bliznakova is costume designer; Russell H. Champa, lighting designer; and Lindsay Jones, sound designer. Dialect coach Gillian Lane-Plescia effects accents that are believable yet understandable.
