STAGE: Metaphorical Soup

Characters leave one life to find meaning in another in Tattoo Girl

Steve Bornfeld

Imagery meets imagination, the comical meets the surreal and a director meets his muse. The result? Have a look:


Elderly World War I military hero Marshal Ferdinand Foch, in Legionnaire's cap, white long johns and holstered pistol, wildly waving mini French flags in a wheelbarrow pushed by a man in an orange toga.













Tattoo Girl (4 stars)


Where: Aruba Hotel, 1215 Las Vegas Blvd. N.


When: Thursday-Sunday, 8 p.m.


Tickets: $10, $12.


Info: 743-3839 or
cockroachtheatre.com



Visual inventiveness alone is reason enough to rally behind Tattoo Girl, the 2006 kickoff production of the creepily named but theatrically charged Cockroach troupe, helmed with stylistic brio by director John Lorenz. This play's commander and committed players pull off one of theater's most impressive feats: They make their material better than it is.


Naomi Iizuka's one-hour one-act, loosely inspired by Donald Barthelme's short story, is a metaphorical soup of abstract set pieces throughout which wander packs of off-kilter characters, including an array of lovers, flimflam artists, revolutionaries, the aforementioned Foch, even pop-culture castoff Nadia Comaneci. Yes, it's that sort of trippy pinball of a play that strains its narrative through a cracked prism—a minor meaning-of-life rumination whose impact doesn't match its self-conscious oddities. And it smacks of the feminist-centered, self-actualizing '70s (we're even treated to the era's genuine you-go-girl anthem—no, not "I Am Woman" but the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme).


It's the story of Perpetua, a discontented, trumpet-toting housewife-mom who deserts her couch-spud spouse and son, searching for a more adventurous life; her abandoned husband, who obsesses over a girl with the mysterious tattoo of Marshal Foch on her back after spotting her in a porn mag, and takes off to find her, winding up sidetracked into a global spiritual quest; and free-spirited Tattoo Girl herself, on Perpetua's reverse journey, trashing her nomadic ways to marry a hops farmer and punch out a litter of little ones.


Will they discover God's purpose for them, or merely their own contentment, by striking out into radical directions contrary to their natures, or will the grass-is-always-greener mantra impart its age-old lesson? (Anyone out there who can't guess? ... Anyone? ... Anyone at all?) Iizuka's obvious assertions—life can be rewarding and routine, exciting and empty, meaningful and meaningless—play like the proverbial dog chasing its tail. And of course, that could be the cosmic point. Still the play skates so superficially over its ideas that it all amounts to "Yeah ... and?"


But it's thematically steeped in universal questions, and the production provides pleasures the play misses. Within the airy, gray-walled venue inside the Aruba Hotel, on a simple set of blocks and steps anchored by a huge black-tarp triangle—the symbol of spiritual vision and knowledge (check your $1 bill)—Lorenz transforms Jessica Betts' dramatic off-white/blue-tint lighting into a virtual co-star. Looming shadows are cast that constantly hint at the characters' shadow lives, creating the sense that the play is free-floating in front of us, yet we're somehow existing on the same metaphysical plane the piece occupies. Lorenz's flavorful, color-drenched costumes—especially during the husband's global wanderings—are a delightful surprise on every entrance.


Lorenz's direction is technically disciplined—no wasted moves or gestures—yet expansive in spirit as befits the play's philosophical premise, and he pulls strong, sharp performances from his entire cast, most indelibly from his two leads. With liquid eyes that shimmer with joy, pain and truth, flame-tressed Amber Ward puts Perpetua through a genuine emotional journey, and Alex Pink, with his velvet baritone and innate likability, packs a stage presence we're immediately drawn to.


Tattoo Girl may not have much new to say, but it's something to see.




Who Looted the Laughs?


Start running in place. Expending lots of energy? Going nowhere? Now you're ready for the oddly enervating exertions of Las Vegas Little Theatre's Loot.


Dragging out LVLT's dispiriting mainstage season (though hopes run high for Take Me Out, and the smaller Blackbox is on a smokin' creative jag), Joe Orton's madcap whirlwind involving a bank robbery's ill-gotten booty, the coffin where it's stashed, a hide-and-seek corpse, a corrupt flatfoot, a murderous nurse and the dotty old man she turned into a widower in hopes of scoring him as her new husband, then dispatching him too—sounds hilarious, doesn't it?—winds up a slog bordering on a snooze. The play's entire feel is fake: Frenzied, spastic motion substitutes for authentic comic inspiration, a ruse transparent to the audience almost immediately. Orton's dual vehicle—both fizzy farce and social commentary—deserves better.


Ever-reliable Ron Lindblom constructs yet another superior set, a London home with depth, detail and understated class. And Paul Thornton pours so much admirable effort into his unethical investigator that he's literally attempting a one-man rescue operation, to no avail. Under Daniel Lane's leaden direction, the rest of the cast reaches for zaniness by Acting with a Capital A, as in Artificially, draining the play of its juices, leaving only its shell.


It isn't actively annoying or offensive, so I'll concede that Loot goes down smoothly. But so does oatmeal.

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