At the heart of the story is Veronica--a young woman whose life is being celebrated by a group of loved ones who have gathered at the behest of performance artist Maya, Veronica's longtime girlfriend. Under Maya's artistic direction, the joint remembrance plays out like a living piece of art as each participant recalls bits of the past: funny moments between Veronica and her circle of friends, her difficult decision to undergo a sex change, the tense interplay between Veronica and her homophobic mother. Ultimately the play crescendos with two striking events: Veronica's violent murder at the hands of two would-be rapists, and Maya's creation of an arresting visual art installation that aptly represents the conflicting facets of Veronica's sexuality and personality (kudos to set designer Marx, who orchestrates a stunning realization of Maya's artwork).

With Curran's solid script as their foundation, the performers build a powerful illustration of Veronica's tragic story. Each one contributes an invaluable blend of humor and pathos to the proceedings. Alison Hartson convincingly and engagingly portrays Veronica's vulnerability as she transitions from woman to man and copes with the conflicting reactions of those around her. As Maya, Vivian Vanderwerd offers a strong, confident presence as Veronica's loyal partner, and Karen Chapin delivers a hilarious yet poignant performance as Veronica's politically incorrect mother, who consistently puts her foot in her mouth as she struggles to understand her daughter's choice. Also adding dimension are Alexander Rodriguez as Veronica's psychiatrist, as well as Tyler Nelson as a smarmy and rather tactless documentary maker.

Among the secondary roles, however, Eric Eisenbrey and Patrick Hurley turn in the most indelible portrayals. As Chess, Veronica's unlucky-in-love homosexual neighbor, Eisenbrey is an amusing jumble of naivete and awkward insecurity. Hurley, as Chess' one-time lover, is just the opposite--a brash, overly confident cynic. Each shines during their monologues, in which their characters add insight to Veronica's character and their own. Together they are hilarious, as Curran uses their characters--and Veronica's story--to satirize and indict various homosexual stereotypes.

Veronica is the personification of one of Maya's art pieces Maya employs mannequin parts and melted dildos), a work-in-progress that also serves as the embodiment of the play's two central themes: that everyone is a living, breathing performance-art piece, but altering our "art" in response to criticism can be disastrous.

Veronica's biggest critic is, naturally, her mother, Dottie (Karen Chapin), who can barely comprehend her daughter's dykedom, much less wrap her head around the notion that her daughter wants to become her son. So she buys her daughter dresses as please-don't-do-this presents. Meanwhile, Veronica's friends Bobby (Patrick Hurley, fabulously bitchy) and Chess (Eric Eisenbrey) are having their own problems.

Bobby rants against queer-culture stereotypes but has become one&Mac247;the Self-Centered Alcoholic Judgmental Queen. Chess has never gotten over the traumatic double-suicide death of his parents nor discovering their bodies. But his soliloquy is Walking the Dead's most chuckle-worthy segment, revealing that he responded to that horror by naming his dog Mom & Dad and telling callers at his suicide-prevention hot line gig to just go right ahead and off themselves.

Walking the Dead is a bit disorienting at first&Mac247;20 minutes in, I was still wondering where the story was, or if one would show up at all. It does, unfolding gradually, allowing the audience to absorb all the flashbacks, giving us time to figure out where everything fits in and how it all leads to an awful, inevitable conclusion. To most audiences, a lot of the play's don't-put-people-in-a-box points will ring familiar, but a nice twist is that it also fucks with the audience's own perceptions of the characters&Mac247;as when two people who are absolutely, positively Gay Man and Lesbo Gal start feeling up each other in a mad flurry of exposed titties and ass cracks.

Yet the message is that nobody can be easily categorized that our lives are a divine mixed-media assemblage of whatever we want to make them, driven home by Walking the Dead's final image of a lone spotlight shining down on a running kitchen blender, surrounded by such traditionally gender-specific items as hunting trophies, footballs, G.I. Joes, condoms, nail polish, Barbie dolls, vibrators and ironing boards. This was who Veronica was&Mac247;who many of us are.

THEATER BEAT
An urgent journey of discovery

Walking the Dead," receives a vital, haunting revival. Plus: "Abstract Expression" and more.

"We are, all of us, works of art." This grace note encapsulates "Walking the Dead," opening the Rude Guerrilla Theatre Company's sixth season in Santa Ana. Keith Curran's tragicomic 1991 transsexual odyssey receives a vital, haunting revival.

It begins in full light, with cast members spanning director Jeff Marx's abstract setting to address the house in counterpoint. Their hilarious cacophony deftly neutralizes resistance to the surreal narrative that ensues.

The plot concerns Veronica (Alison Hartson), whose journey of self-discovery emerges in fragmented flashbacks by various intimates. This stylized commentary illuminates its subject indirectly, through what its commentators reveal about themselves and, by default, the audience.

By the shattering denouement, message and metaphor have merged into a memorial performance art installation of indelible pathos and simplicity.

Curran's aesthetic control and spot-on epigrams connect directly with the solar plexus, underscored by a topical urgency that remains stunning. Marx negotiates the blend of Maria Irene Fornes, Luigi Pirandello and Paul Rudnick throughout to memorable effect.

The ensemble is exemplary. Hartson's superb protagonist requires only more performances to be definitive. As Veronica's quietly eloquent lover and blithely bigoted mother (the horns of the dilemma), Vivian Vanderwerd and Karen Chapin are marvelous in their emotional accuracy.

Eric Eisenbrey's guileless best friend, Patrick Hurley's latter-day Oscar Wilde, Alexander Rodriguez's psychiatrist and Tyler Nelson's videographer make ideal use of every opportunity. So does this forthright production, and discerning audiences of any persuasion will miss it at their peril.

—David C. Nichols

Keith Curran's "Walking the Dead" was written over 10 years ago, yet its subject – gay bashing in general and, in particular, the murder of a transgender woman-turned-man – is, sad to say, vivid and fresh. Recent hate crimes like the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay man, only serve to remind that intolerance toward those of alternate lifestyles continues to exist in American culture.

Most gays and lesbians deal with such prejudice on a daily basis. Some, like Curran's main character, Veronica, wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time, paying the price with their life. In Rude Guerrilla Theater Company's new staging, well directed by Jeff Marx, the story's unflinching brutality is ably balanced by grim spurts of laughter, anchored in Curran's often morbid sense of humor and brought to life by Marx's skilled, well-chosen cast.

The play's inevitably violent conclusion, shown in flashback, spurs Veronica's lesbian lover, a performance artist, to create a service for her murdered partner that's part memorial, part performance-art piece. It's through this service that "Walking the Dead" reveals who Veronica was and why she made the choices she did. More critically, it shows how those around her reacted to her in death – shown in the present – and in life – shown in flashbacks.

'Walking the Dead'

WHAT: Rude Guerrilla Theater Company staging of Keith Curran's often brutally funny drama

WHEN: Through Feb. 2. 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays (also 8 p.m. January 30)

WHERE: Empire Theater, 200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana

HOW MUCH: $12-$15 LENGTH: 2 hours, 25 minutes

SUITABILITY: Violent content and nudity; those under 17 admitted only with parent or guardian

CALL: (714) 547-4688 or www.rudeguerrilla.com

We're in the greater Boston area, where we meet Maya, Veronica's black lover; Veronica's gay friend Chester (known as "Chess"); Bobby, a cynical advertising copywriter and Chess' newest partner; and Stan, a small-time New York cinematographer out to document Veronica's life and the series of operations that turn her into the man named Homer.

Looming large over this circle of characters is Veronica's mother, Dottie, a devout Catholic completely out of touch with her daughter's life. On those occasions when Dottie pulls her head out of the sand, her blunt comments reveal her as an equal-opportunity bigot, as intolerant of blacks and other ethnic groups as she is toward "dykes" like Veronica or, for that matter, any other alternative sexual orientation.

At the Empire Theater in Santa Ana's Artists Village, Marx and company richly flesh out Curran's humane yet unblinking, unsentimental text. It's obvious that by reliving scenes that revolved around Veronica/Homer, the survivors of his/her murder are "walking the dead" to exorcise their angst over the loss of a gentle yet troubled soul who always felt she was "born in the wrong body."

As Veronica/Homer, Alison Hartson's pretty face belies the nature of her role. Hartson is petite and only vaguely androgynous, but she capably communicates the character's no-nonsense nature, determination to become a man, and anger and frustration toward her mother, who has the uncanny ability to make her feel "like a friggin' freak." It's a bittersweet performance that doesn't ask for our pity, but, in the end, receives it anyway.

Hartson's onstage presence is well-balanced by Karen Chapin as Dottie, the mother from hell. Chapin shows this society matron's blithe unawareness of the hurts inflicted by her callous, unthinking remarks. Chapin's sweetly oblivious handling of the role also underscores the final irony of Curran's script – that the pressures of Dottie's expectations indirectly cause her own child's death.

As Bobby, Patrick Hurley provides the evening's most vivid performance. He doesn't just hiss the man's caustic, often cold-blooded comments; his wisenheimer impertinence and deft comic timing make this self-hating gay man's comments real, not stereotypical, and add depth to his ambivalence toward Chess' bland agreeability.

In the latter role, Eric Eisenbrey is more a naive, innocent cipher than the death- obsessed young gay man so tortured that he spouts nonsense words whenever emotionally agitated. Vivian Vanderwerd's imposing physical presence lends Maya strength but is in ironic contrast to her inconsolate grief, of which the actress could stand to reveal more. Likewise, Tyler Nelson's Stan is amusingly colorful where the character calls for more of a cynical, shameless exploiter.

Strong individual performances carry the difficult script in the current production of "Walking the Dead" at Rude Guerrilla. The show is comprised of characters whose experiences and levels of development will force their audience to care about them, but at the same time, the individual drives behind each character makes it suspect that these individuals have any room to care for each other. Well so what? Why do they need to care about each other? Maybe they don't, except for the fact that the entire show centers around a group discussion focusing on Veronica (Alison Hartson), a trans-gendered man who has recently been murdered.

Each in their own way, the characters who make up this therapeutic gathering, assert their own identities and how their lives have been affected through their love, friendship, or acquaintance with Veronica. The characters are all written strongly enough so that they are enthralling as they each tell their individual stories, and are all portrayed by cast members who have the talent to really bring them to life. Most notably would be in the characters of Bobby (Patrick Hurley) and Dottie (Karen Chapin). With his flamboyant and witty convictions, Hurley brings forth an energy through his aging-alcoholic-has been-hottie of a character to get the audience laughing in this strangely comedic dark drama. As Veronica's mother, we find in the character of Dottie, many conservative views on homosexuality and trans-gendered people served up to us, whether we're ready for them or not. Chapin is able to take us beyond just these credos--her performance delivers the true weight of the written words as she creates a character who is convinced of their reasoned normalcy.

Other characters take different viewpoints and have unique stories of their own to tell, whether it be through Veronica's best friend Chess (Eric Eisenbrey), the filmmaker Stan (Tyler Nelson), or Maya, (Vivian Vanderwerd) Veronica's girlfriend who has assembled all of the members of the group to cope and share their feelings about the person who has touched all of their lives. Each one of these performances are believable and passionate, particularly within Vanderwerd's telling of how she has twice seen the brutalizing of her lover's body: from the operation and with the mutilation of her murdered body. Yet each character is so strong that their performances which relate their identities to us, stand quite nicely on their own and seem to remain there, despite their relationships with Veronica and after hearing the individual testimonies from each other.

This is not to downplay the performance of Alison Hartson. She plays the role of Veronica beautifully. She comes across as conflicted and often resigned, which truly shows the gravity of her situation in being born as person she is not and never has been. But all in all, I could not help feeling that if Veronica, or Homer (her new name after she undergoes her surgery) was there to witness this therapeutic wake, she would realize how many unique and strongly independent people had surrounded her life, but that their independent identities remained much as they were, despite all the changes she herself had made.

Review by Robert Tomoguchi
eggplant@wallfour.com