THEATER - "Clean"

Clean is not a sophomoric production. It’s not even freshmanic. It is a bit manic—thanks more to the nonsensical script and jittery, unbalanced acting than any actual cleverness—but if this type of gag-heavy writing was ever fresh, it’s long since rotted. If worth classifying, Clean belongs to the category of pop avant-garde, which is to say that it’s a dumbed-down eclecticism meant to be easily packaged for the lowest common denominator. It fails, by the way, at that, too.

The plot seems like a stream of consciousness cooked up while on acid, and held together only by the narrator cum hero, Fescue (John Kudan, whose gravelly squeal might not make it through the run). The whole cockamamie plot—not bad enough to be cult, or hip enough to be cool¬—would actually make a better subtitle for the show than as actual substance, and can be described simply as “How to get from the LIRR to Mars without really trying.” Sexy, dim-witted socialite Digby (Sarah Viccellio, who is both off-key and monotone) stumbles through a train compartment populated by blow-up dummies to a CD factory inhabited by a statuesque (read: pointless) robot named Elvis. She communicates with a film clip from 1927. She slaps her ass a lot and pouts, takes off her underwear and contemplates suicide, and learns nothing. Cheap sight gags follow in her footsteps, and when they don’t, they pop up on the multimedia “backdrop” that serves to set an even sleazier mood than the wide-open stage and flat characters. None of these are ever actually good or bad enough to be funny—kind of like a black hole.

Maybe it’s because so many of the actors flub their lines, seem unprepared, or deliver such strikingly unoriginal and expository monologues, but Nancy Rodriguez actually comes out of the whole thing looking like a good actor trapped in a bad play. Her character’s quirk—holding up a puppet to represent her daughter—turns out to be a blessing, as she gets to flip between two totally contrasting voices, even if neither seems to have much of a point. (The opposite is true for Bjorn Thorstad, who is crippled by his character’s unforgivable penchant for badly imitating Cagney and Brando.)

I hesitate to blame the director, Christopher Maring--after all, he was handed terrible material--but he might’ve made Clean tolerable had he a picked a discernable style of comedy and pursued it head-on instead of half-assed. But it’s the writer, Bob Epstein, who really should know better. Writing a play isn’t easy, I know, but calling Clean a play is what makes people think that it is.