THEATER REVIEW : Opposites Attract in Sushi Performance

SAN DIEGO —  If it is comforting to know that daggers are thrown even in the relationships that work, then the long-running performance team of Tom Keegan and Davidson Lloyd should prove comforting indeed.

Keegan and Lloyd mine their 11-year romantic and professional relationship for two pieces, “Crawling Off Broadway” and “Passing on the Right and Other Accidents of Life,” their San Diego premiere, playing through Saturday at Sushi Gallery. They are a gay couple, but the saga of opposites in love is universally recognizable, particularly in the older, far more polished “Passing on the Right,” a vignette depicting the couple driving each other insane as they drive across the country.

Keegan wants to stop and smell the flowers. Lloyd wants to keep driving. Keegan wants to stop and eat. Lloyd wants to keep driving. As they at last drop off to sleep, Lloyd wants to make love. Keegan wants to keep driving.

“I can’t stand him,” each thinks out loud about the other. And then they shout for each other’s benefit: “I love you!” followed by Keegan thinking--out loud again--”Liar!”

The form is fluid as they move from surface conversation to “Strange Interlude”--like revelations of their inner thoughts, punctuated by a dancing of their emotions and a generous sprinkling of vaudevillian comedy. In “Crawling Off Broadway,” a story of their push-pull relationship to show biz, inspiration strikes in the form of a green plastic hammer on Lloyd’s head; the Muse speaks as a squeak through plastic red lips; Lloyd literally pops up toast when Keegan calls himself “the toast of the town.”

When all these connections between the images work, it is electric, like the best of poetry or film.

But, if it seems like too much to expect it all to come together, it is. The going can get awfully ponderous under Dan McKereghan’s reverent direction. All right, so their work isn’t “Cats,” as Keegan explains to his mother (Lloyd in a stole and a wig), but that doesn’t mean they should stop having fun with it. The serious moments can speak for themselves without all those surrounding pauses setting them up. It’s obvious that these talented guys have wings. Now if only they would fly with their material.

The menu changes for the Sunday performance to two solo pieces: “I Lead Three Lives,” written and performed by Lloyd about his overlapping careers of house painter, schoolteacher and performance artist, and “Bombay Lunch,” written and performed by Keegan, about his three-month journey to post-modern India.

Performances at 8 p.m. nightly through Sunday at the Sushi Gallery at 852 8th Ave.