Friday, October 28, 2005
Theater: 'The Sacred Geometry of S&M Porn'
Review: The world premiere scores as both comedy and drama despite a second
half that dilutes its focus.
By ERIC MARCHESE
Special to the Register

Although it has bravely blazed trails along many a theatrical path, Rude
Guerrilla Theater Company has never had much of a taste for producing original works, which might make its world premiere programming of local playwright
Johnna Adams' "The Sacred Geometry of S&M Porn" seem, for many, a leap of faith. To boot, the second half of Adams' darkly satirical comedy is blatantly experimental, moving small groups of the audience through a maze of scenes
through different areas of the theater. In other respects, though, "Sacred
Geometry" resembles previous Rude Guerrilla shows, which leaves only the question of whether the second act's unusual technique qualifies as a stunt or as
something integral to the storytelling process.

From the get-go, director Dave Barton has a sure handle on Adams' script,
which starts with a "60 Minutes" interview between Mike Wallace and Judith
Christ and boldly proffers carefully drawn drama alongside its deft yet scathing
satire. Judith (Jill Cary Martin), a self-styled faith healer who runs her own
traveling revival show, proclaims she's "Jesus Christ, returned to this earth to
finish my work." Her sister Squeak (Karen Kähler) believes Judith's a fraud - a
drunk who has never healed a soul. Just the same, Judith's ailing daughter
Margaret needs healing, so Squeak kidnaps Judith.

Soon we're back in Nazareth, a shabby Texas backwater that, in Adams and
Barton's hands, recalls the world of the Coen brothers' "Raising Arizona." Most
of the first act of "Sacred Geometry" delivers the same combination of warped
humor and wry, cynical view of life as that 1987 film, but in a more R-rated
package - and with far more substance than anything by the Coens.
Without realizing he's following in mom Judith's footsteps, Tobey (Scott
Barber) has invented a new "religion" known as Geometric Sensualism, whose
"bible" is a collection of sadomasochistic porn photos, pressed into a scrapbook
along with Tobey's rambling observations about dominants and submissives (the pecking order in the S&M world). Along with wiltingly funny portrayals of Adams' various redneck characters, "Sacred Geometry" accurately depicts yet also satirizes the nature of religious cults, its text peppered with references to hit shows on CBS (its all-seeing "eye" logo apparently no coincidence) and to Orange County. The second act's high degree of audience participation and interaction between characters and audience add a unique dimension to "Sacred Geometry," yet the tight focus of the play's first half is diffused by the technique of moving audience groups from scene to scene.

Diluted as it may be, the last half boasts searing images bolstered by Adams'
always dense writing: the spirit of Scooter (Matthew Hilliard), Tobey's
dumb-as-rocks best friend, dressed in white, calmly explaining the nature of the
afterlife; the spectral image of Margaret (Sarah Elizabeth Boros), toe-tagged
and draped in a white sheet, trading souls with audience members in the
bathroom of a hospital morgue; Judith's withering description of how the fantasy most humans have of martyrdom never touches the brutal reality, of how God's
eye is always upon us, and of his inevitable disappointment in his children.
Experimental to the hilt, "Sacred Geometry" uses human-size puppets (built by
Sean Cawelti) in some scenes to represent Judith and Mike Wallace and, in
Act 2, shows a video of a typical home populated by a Geometric Sensualist
dominant and his five submissives. The video weakly spoofs reality TV á la "Big Brother"; the puppets, though, are a masterstroke, with Jonathan Talmadge capturing Wallace's distinct vocal inflections to Boros' saucy - and sauced -
Judith, a wicked satire of the typical "60 Minutes" investigative story.
Barber is comically coy as the teen who founds a new religious order based
partially on his own enjoyment of pain, partly on his farfetched yet strangely
logical understanding of the geometric "rules" of a multi-dimensional
universe. As Judith, Martin lampoons faith healers dolled up like country-Western stars, a reading equal parts glamour, sarcasm, pettiness and fervent
Bible-thumping, with generous doses of earthy laughter, head shaking and eye rolling for good comedic measure.

Kähler's Squeak is a straightforward woman trying to hold the family
together; a scene with her and Boros, as resurrected daughter Margaret, is the
play's most wrenching. Going for outrageous, larger-than-life spoofs of rednecks are Rick Kopps, Kerry Perdue and Sally Norton as, respectively, Squeak's
sadistic second husband Brian, Brian's slutty girlfriend Audry and Scooter's
outraged mom. Commenting on the proceedings, and serving as somewhat of a
narrator, is Judith's Demon, played as a hissing, leering little Puck by Peter
Balgoyen with enough conviction to make such a being's existence almost credible.
Hurt Me, Jesus
Sacred Geometry is richly perverse

by JOEL BEERS

In the past 10 years, Orange County storefront theaters have suffered no shortage of new plays by local writers. There have been big plays and short plays, musicals and monologues. Plays about punk rock, coal miners, romantic poets—even one in which the playwright asked the audience to pardon his penis. Some have been good, some have been unbearable; most were in between.

But never has a county storefront—or any local theater, for that matter—witnessed a more ambitious or genuinely unique play than Johnna Adams’ frequently mesmerizing and occasionally ridiculous The Sacred Geometry of S&M Porn. One of Southern California’s most dedicated playwrights, Adams has struck a peculiarly deep well of Texas Tea with this one, and though it needs refinement, it feels like a breakout work.

The first act finds us hanging out with Mike Wallace, a fire-and-brimstone alcoholic revival preacher named Judith Christ (the always solid Jill Cary Martin), and her dumb-as-dirt white-trash Texas family. Christ is clashing with Wallace (Jonathan Talmadge, wielding a creepy oversized puppet), who is trying to expose her as a moneygrubbing, whiskey-guzzling fraud. Meanwhile, her son, Tobey (a sparklingly dynamic Scott Barber), whom she abandoned 16 years ago, is developing a cult based on hardcore porno magazines, sadomasochism, and a deliriously rambling philosophy that incorporates everything from cosmogony and geometry to group sex and metaphysical gibberish.

The act is sprawling, richly perverse and twistedly funny, and its blend of Revelation with Texas trash is always entertaining, but it doesn’t come close to preparing you for a second act that truly has to be experienced to be appreciated.

This is a very good play, but not yet a great one. As extraordinary as the second act is, it doesn’t develop the plot or characters—and near-lethal logistical problems, a too-obvious climax and a very unfortunate video of a happy cult family undermine the action. All this, plus ubiquitous references to CBS as some kind of modern Illuminati, intrudes upon and obscures the truly fascinating and frightening part of Adams’ play: the nature of religious ecstasy and the lengths ordinary folks are willing to go to get a taste.

Still, this is a play that misses only because it fires so many bullets. They don’t all hit their targets, but the sheer audacity of the barrage, and the ones that hit dead center, make this one of the most intriguing plays—and one of the most engrossing messes—these eyes have ever seen on a local stage.

THE SACRED GEOMETRY OF S&M PORN AT RUDE GUERRILLA THEATER COMPANY, 200 N. BROADWAY, SANTA ANA, (714) 547-4688. FRI.-SAT., 8 P.M.; SUN., 2:30 P.M. THROUGH NOV. 12. $10-$18.