San Diego experienced something on Saturday, January 29, 2011, that doesn’t happen much outside of New York: two plays had their world premiere performances at local theatres. But, the local theatres were not the Old Globe and the La Jolla Playhouse. Rather, they were smaller companies: ion Theatre, in Hillcrest, and Cygnet Theatre, in Old Town.

My colleague, Welton Jones, covered the Cygnet opening, and his review may be read by clicking on the link. As for the ion premiere, Wonder Wounded Heroes, by actor and first-time playwright Gordon MacDonald Wachsman, let’s say that the production confirms ion’s preeminence as a company that tackles difficult material in an intelligent manner.

Indeed, Mr. Wachsman’s play qualifies as difficult material. One might call it Sam Shepard meets Hamlet and not be too far off. Mr. Shepard writes plays filled with violence and humor about feuding brothers set in remote locations, while Hamlet is a play about a murderous coming of age, deception, and madness, real and feigned.

Wonder Wounded Heroes matches these qualities. It is set in the Yukon section of Canada, in a ramshackle cabin (scenic design by Claudio Raygoza and Matt Scott). A pair of brothers, Gus and Otto (Mr. Scott and Ruff Yeager), looking as though they were 60s leftovers, spend their days drinking and snarling at each other. They are visited by a third brother, Harry (Tom Hall), who has led a more conventional life in Southern California but who comes seeking closure on family issues. As these issues are confronted, Harry gets caught up in what turns out to be the family dysfunction.

Part of this dysfunction involved their father’s insistence that his sons learn the entire text to Hamlet by the time they were nine years old. Grainy black-and-white film scenes created by Mr. Raygoza and featuring David Ahmadian as Young Otto, Matthew Alexander as Young Gus, Andrew Poole as Young Harry, and Tim Schubert as The Father, portray to the audience what the characters remember. Otto and Gus in particular look like shell-shocked Vietnam leftovers, and Mr. Raygoza’s selection of music for the play’s transitions emphasizes that connection, but they weren’t even born by the time that the Vietnam War ended. They are wounded, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and Harry’s arrival sets into motion that tragedy that might well have occurred even had he not visited.

Mr. Wachsman’s work suffers from being neither as poetic nor as funny as Mr. Shepard’s plays (though, there are several quite humorous lines in the 90-minute, no intermission, production). His parallels with Hamlet might be clear to one intimately conversant with Shakespeare’s play, but others might well be left in the dark. The internecine warfare among the brothers has too much of a feeling of “been there, done that.”

Yet, director Glenn Paris has led his cast into hell and back, and ion’s reputation for high quality ensemble acting remains intact. All of Messrs Hall, Scott, and Yeager perform admirably, and the 49-seat Blk Box theatre, located in a strip mall at the corner of Sixth and Pennsylvania Avenues, proves to be a remarkably intimate space for watching top-notch performances.

Wonder Wounded Heroes runs through February 19. It will be followed on March 9 by another play about violently clashing masculinities, Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore.

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