Playwright: Leslye Headland. At: Redtwist Theater, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. Tickets: 773-728-7529; www.redtwist.org; $25-$30. Runs through: June 23
The rock-and-roll ethos is a romantic one (we are told), so at first it's easy to mistake Dorian for just another pasty-faced young singer/songwriter exploiting the myth. We soon learn that his pain is genuine, stemming from a childhood marked by a mother who abandoned her family, leaving her son to protect his little sister from their abusive father. Dorian's muse, June (the "June Gloom" of his song lyrics), also claims a broken home and crippling adolescent guilt as her legacy, rendering her the perfect match for a withdrawn boy enamored of, literally, beating himself up.
Well, doesn't art often flower in tainted soil? Dorian's fellow band-members may focus on their careers, courting coolhunters in their quest for that holy-grail recording contract, but Dorian's sister Lydia, having found peace and forgiveness in God, is out to save her brother's soul. The news that their hated sire is dying of a deservedly agonizing disease drives Dorian to further flight from his conflicting emotions, and when Lydia demands a catharsis following the funeral ("You might as well feel it now, and get it over with," she exhorts him), it does not come without risks.
Playwright Leslye Headland declares her play to be part of a series on the seven deadly sins, this one being "wrath," while Redtwist's publicity bills it a "darkly comic, brutal dissection," and pop-cult buffs can always view it as a satirical commentary on the necrophilic L.A. music scene. Ignore them all—the most compelling dramatic question we are asked to ponder is whether the phrase "ars longa, vita brevis" ("art is long, life is short") justifies everything, or, as a character asserts, "What you are is more important than what you make." And then there are the odds of having it both ways.
Walking the thin e-string between teen soap and gritty SoCal noir is an all-star storefront-circuit cast director Jonathan Berry assembles, featuring heroic performances from Peter Oyloe and Mary Williamson as the star-twisted lovers, with intelligently uncondescending support from Brittany Burch as the born-again Lydia and Ashley Neal as the hipper-than-thou Ivy, flanked by Chris Chmelik and an almost-unrecognizable Nick Vidal as nerdy sidemen Shane and Hank. The tech is uniformly first-rate, but note especially Ryan Bourque, currently nominated for a Jeff, whose smack-and-throttle choreography for the desperado lovers delivers skin-stinging battery without ever endangering spectators seated barely inches away. (Guitar enthusiasts are also warned that a Gibson Les Paul is mistreated horribly in the course of the action.)
