Acting Up

Cilicia Yakhlef

FUN WITH SATAN
@
THE DECENCY ACTS

The Bug Theater,
3654 Navajo
303-477-9984
April 20 to May 19, 8 pm
www.bugtheatre.com

Two nearly naked monks, a redneck politician, his staff, a Bible slappin' preacher, and the spirit of Beelzebub form the liquid foundation for The Bug's boat rocking presentation of The Decency Acts. The event is a collaboration between the Bug Theater Company and Promethean Theater group, and viewers are treated to nearly three hours of solid play-making by two of the region's most experienced professional companies.

Promethean kicks off the evening with Noonday Demons, a play by Peter Barnes about the psychological debauchery of ancient Saints Eusebius and Pior. Step Pearce takes the stage as St. Eusebius. Playing opposite only to an intestinal looking mound of dung, Step Pearce occupies the stage alone for much of the play. He dons a saintly affectation while voicing Early Modern English monologue and Latin chants written by the playwright.

The fun (and less pious dialogue) revs up when Satan takes his noonday shot at tempting the soon-to-be saint. Our good buddy Beelzebub speaks in guttural cockney, a helpful distinction in consideration of the fact that Step Pearce also plays Satan. The devil possesses would-be Saint Eusebius, and the battle for possession of the saintly soul mirrors the on-stage battle for the body of actor Step Pearce.

Theatrically speaking, scripts like this are very risky. They generally constitute a huge stretch for the actor, but Pearce does a fine job with this segment. Arduously rehearsed physical and vocal precision result in a schticky, current portrayal of the archetypal conflict between good and evil.

Just when the action begins to slow though, Saint Pior-- the other white meat for the devil-- shows up. Joel Harmon plays St. Pior, and although the play was enjoyable to begin with, the raucous rivalry between the saints is played to the hilt of hilarity by director Melanie Moseley.

The entire segment featuring Pearce and Harmon is engrossingly directed and played to perfection. Harmon gives a perfectly Pythonesque performance, along-side Pearce, that has the audience rolling at all the right moments. Not satisfied though, director Moseley pushes the actors through fight after fight-- Keystone boxers to Matrix matchup-- finally settling down with a zany Zen portrayal of levitation contests and astral projection wars.

Noonday Demons is a solid play with an intelligent script. It aptly derides the decency game with a demonic corner on the silliness market. All concerned with this piece have produced a winner.

7 Blowjobs, written by Mac Wellman is a mind-numbing play that presents a dizzy, monochromatic picture of American morality as a political practice. It is difficult to criticize art-- and I think the intention behind this piece was definitely artistic-- but, there is an overly pretentious attitude about any work written with "in your face" redundancy, not to mention first grade language and characterizations.

The subject matter, political morality, is an oxymoron to be sure. However, that doesn't mean that the plot must trudge along like an ox and the audience must be addressed as a mass of morons. Had the playwright not taken it upon himself to overkill the audience along with the subject matter in his endeavor to fit form to function, this might have been a more than mildly funny play. As it was, the only thing that saved it was a slew of good performances and a slurry of well directed action.

Donna Morrison, Belle Dame of the Bug, is, greatly to her credit, a risk taker. Although this script was a gamble, her directorial skill along with the acting attributes of the Bug Theater Company brought an artistic edge to the work. Morrison manages to stay true to the work, but still gives the audience an actively humorous production.

Mare Philpott is intriguingly sincere in her performance as Dot. She takes advantage of perhaps the only depth of character afforded within the confines of the script. Dot's character is the only one throughout the play designed to be sympathetic. Thankfully, Philpott plays the part well and lights up the stage in the process.

Colorful characters abound, in fact, throughout the production, somehow dancing around the circular mazes of dialogue to brighten the stage with intensely dramatic facial expressions and action. The conflagrations of physical characterizations in opposition to the one-dimensional flat-line of the dialogue represents, in fact, the deeper thematic intention of action vs. speech, which gives this production the bulk of its dramatic appeal.

Lisa Rosenhagen, Verl Hite, Joel Harmon, Heston Gray and Step Pearce manage, in spite of the script, to ham it up in classic Bug fashion. Cameo performances by Gary Culig and Alex Weimer delight regular Bug lovers with brief but tenable jolts of theatrical presence. All told, a very enjoyable night of theater. B