Review: Anne Galjour's New England stories

You Can't Get There From Here: Solo drama. Written and performed by Anne Galjour. Directed by Jayne Wenger. (Through Sept. 27. Z Space, Theater Artaud, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. 70 minutes. Tickets $20. Call (800) 838-3006 or go to www.zspace.org.)

Anne Galjour is waging a little class warfare at Theater Artaud, but she's very nice about it. That's both a good thing and a bit disappointing.

It's good because Galjour's innate charm and sensitivity for the warts-and-all characters she portrays - the same qualities that lit up her "Alligator Tales" and "Hurricane" - shine through in "You Can't Get There From Here," her first new solo piece in too many years. The drawback is that at times Galjour's approach seems too polite to fully exploit the dramatic potential of her story.

The West Coast run of "Get There" opened Thursday as the first production of Z Space's 10-year lease on Artaud, a welcome revival of an important and too-long-dormant facility. It's a piece that takes Galjour out of her comfort zone, and not just because it deals with the great American taboo of class. Developed by Galjour and director Jayne Wenger at Dartmouth College, "Get There" is Galjour's first solo that isn't set in the bayous of her native Louisiana.

It's the interwoven stories of three women in a rural valley along the Vermont-New Hampshire border where farmland is getting swallowed up by easy-mortgage-fueled development. All are struggling with aspects of the economic war against the unwealthy, but each is a fully drawn individual.

Local elder Abigail is trying to persuade her still-working husband to sell their old home so they can revel in snowbird retirement. Newcomer Iris, an emergency room nurse, is battling the garden depradations of her displaced-farmer neighbor's dog and a too-good-to-be-true mortgage. Welfare mom Regina, an aspiring teacher and someday homeowner, is trying to instill Horatio Alger dreams in her daughter.

In Wenger's handsomely spare staging, Galjour slips from one woman to another, the men and little girl with consummate skill, nailing a variety of New England accents. The stories intertwine with deceptive simplicity, if a bit too neatly. What seem missing are the depth of empathetic humor that usually laces Galjour's portraits and the skill in conjuring the smell and feel of the air of her bayou stories.

But as the people spring to life, their stories are well worth telling and told well. If Regina becomes disillusioned, it's impossible not to wish with her that "where you live does not determine who you are."

E-mail Robert Hurwitt at rhurwitt@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle