Theater Review - Beyond redemption

Is there a point at which cynicism becomes naiveté? At the moment, Neil LaBute is the film industry’s hottest misanthrope, with his movies In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors offering an unremittingly jaundiced view of modern Americans. (LaBute didn’t write his latest film, Nurse Betty, but its contrived happy ending made him seem more cynical than ever.)

LaBute’s near-nihilism can be bracing and forceful, but can seem reductive as well. His knee-jerk, everybody-sucks pessimism becomes the flip side of Pollyanna optimism, a worldview that’s too simple and one-sided to seem truly realistic. LaBute’s stage play Bash finds him at his harshest, as he offers three vignettes of seemingly ordinary people inflicting horrible actions on innocents. It’s nevertheless a showcase for actors, as demonstrated by the production at Theatre in the Square’s Alley Stage, starkly directed by Alan Kilpatrick.

In Bash, LaBute’s most sophomoric tendency is his titles, particularly the first one, “Medea Redux,” which unsubtly hints at the events to come. We observe a young woman (Joan Croker) telling her story to a tape recorder in what appears to be a police station interrogation room. As she exhales cigarette smoke she explains, in painful detail, how she was seduced, impregnated and abandoned by a teacher at the age of 13.

She coolly recounts how she eventually got even with her former lover, but LaBute doesn’t quite find the young woman’s voice, peppering her flights of descriptive fancy (she mentions the “howl of the cosmos”) with would-be “earthy” profanities. But Croker’s careful, brittle performance brings the role into a sharper focus that’s still affecting.

“Iphigenia in Orem” at first comes across as comedy; Hugh Adams’ traveling salesman is a would-be cool operator, talking up his life like a sales pitch. The content becomes much darker, though, as the salesman reveals his wish to unburden himself of details surrounding a child’s death and its connection to a round of layoffs at his firm. The best of Bash, “Iphigenia” combines Raymond Carver’s attention to detail with an O. Henry ending.

Adams has terrific comic timing and instincts: At an early, cheerful moment he delivers the line “I like it a lot” with an English accent, as if quoting an ill-remembered movie. At times reminiscent of Martin Mull or Jeff Daniels, his face can seem made of rubber, with a malleability that’s ideal for humor. But by the end of his story he does something different, conveying his character’s despair with a confused look, as if his features are unable to cohere to a recognizable expression. It’s a haunting moment.

The final section, “A Gaggle of Saints,” has two young people in formal wear, John (Christopher Graham) and Sue (Jen Apgar), who tell overlapping monologues centered around a Manhattan party. At first they’re all youthful enthusiasm, remembering how they first met, and Apgar enthuses over her black taffeta gown with a dizziness that borders on cloying, but offers a counterpoint to what’s to come.

John describes the party as a “bash,” a word that takes on an unmistakable second meaning when he and his fellows roam the park afterward. John’s collegiate enthusiasm turns monstrously ugly when he excitedly recounts a violent episode that he suggests is no isolated incident. Graham credibly conveys how John’s upstanding demeanor and love for Sue conceals a bloodthirsty rage, making up for LaBute’s didactic suggestion that frat boys, with their classic cars and Perry Ellis clothes, are pure evil.

Recorded for Showtime as “Bash: Latterday Plays,” the script has seen high-profile stagings with Calista Flockhart in the female roles. And that star power and LaBute’s directorial renown no doubt gives Bash more cachet than it deserves. But the cast of the Alley Stage production helps redeem the material, even as Bash asserts that humanity is itself beyond redemption.

Bash plays through April 11 at the Alley Stage of Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta, with performances at 8 p.m. Tues.-Sat. and 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sundays. $10-$15. 770-422-8369. ??