Picture the moment in The Producers—before they conclude that it must be a put-on—when the audience stares in slack-jawed disbelief at tap-dancing Nazis in Springtime for Hitler, unable to grasp that what they're seeing is what they're seeing.
Now subtract Springtime for Hitler and twinkle-toed fascists, substitute Love Is a Pain and its trapped-like-rats cast and leave the audience intact: Welcome to the disastrous opening night of the Riviera's new "musical comedy," whose titular use of "pain" is not only mighty unfortunate, but a two-pound bag of catnip to critics.
At a glance: tired plot, tone-deaf dialogue, third-grade sex jokes unfit for Porky's 2 ("I ca-raaaa-zzzzy for you," says a male Chinese character to a woman, "and my weenie ca-raaaa-zzzzy for you too!"), no narrative coherence, infantile slapstick, entire scenes making no sense, actors wandering the stage looking lost, MIA direction, dance numbers without context, performers stepping on each other's lines, disjointed sound and lighting cures, blaring songs sung to recorded music, long, unfunny, excruciating exchanges begging for laughs that won't come, theatergoers giggling only at mistakes ... a breathtaking mess. No programs were handed out, so most performers are unidentified, and I didn't request a cast list to minimize embarrassment. But one name can't escape notice.
The hour-long Pain is authored by Chinese actress Shel Shine, who cast herself in the featured role of an immigrant named Fortune Cookie (subtlety, thy name ain't this play). It opens at the La Cage showroom on the producers' stated dream of eventual (giggle, titter, guffaw) Great White Way residency: "Instead of Broadway coming to Las Vegas, this show is being born here in Las Vegas with rumblings and negotiations for this show to go to Broadway!" said Marvin Lashever, the show's general manager, in a statement.
That's a monumental delusion for a production that would shame the shabbiest community theater unless it is almost thoroughly ripped up, rethought and reconstructed, and even then would have to pole-vault over far better efforts to buck history.
Remember Notre Dame du Paris? Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus? We Will Rock You? Tease? We might. Broadway doesn't. And those were productions that, each in their own way, attempted a high gloss and professional sheen. Cheesy shows—and Love Is a Pain is particularly pungent, at least at its opening—are part of the Strip's flavoring, but to suggest that it's a worthy Vegas export to New York is a disgraceful way to repay Gotham for what it has shipped here (Avenue Q, Mamma Mia, with Hairspray, Menopause: The Musical, Phantom and Spamalot on deck).
With audience members steadily striding out the doors (and my brain screaming, "Please, oh merciful God, LEMME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"—I remained out of professional obligation, wincing all the way), Pain's plot unfurled as the hoary story of onetime-lovers-turned-enemies-who-discover-they-love-each-other-after-all, a setup sucked dry in theater, TV and film, even from a homicidal angle in War of the Roses. In fact, Pain is almost a direct rip-off of Roses—man and wife divorce, can't afford to live alone, share the same house while trying to live separate lives and love other people—minus the dark, savage edge.
Veteran director Raymond Homer's hand seems absent in a staging that has actors flailing about like bumper cars. On the La Cage stage with a thrust runway, Pain actually begins promisingly, a flesh-costumed, fig-leafed Adam and Eve dancing a short balletic ode to the sexes. But once we're whisked to the story—schlumpy, blustery little pizza-maker (whose buck-fifty toupee keeps slipping off) and estranged spouse take in a boarder (Shine), triggering silly, confusing romantic entanglements (including with a Marilyn Monroe-ish transvestite)—Pain gains speed ... downhill.
Karin Denise (Splash) portrays the family dog, conceived as a one-mutt Greek chorus on the action, but this canine is overbearing and annoying. And while the ear-shattering sound system crackled with static bursts like thunderclaps, Denise's featured song, the only one with both a comedic and musical pulse, was actually undermiked. In a particularly odd bit of business: the dog and Fortune Cookie scratch off fleas together to the strains of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
Among many more inexplicable elements: a Chinese character whose singing resembles a cantor's; lights that quickly darken after a song, stumping the audience as to whether to applaud; background actors suddenly pantomiming to each other frantically, distracting from the primary scene; and a phone seduction with a frankfurter vendor rife with hot-dog dick jokes and bun yuks. Only a partial set, back-lit with hologram-style videography genuinely impressed. It was, fittingly, of a bathroom.
Yes, love is a pain. But this is anguish.