STAGE REVIEW : ‘MONKEY’ FOCUSES ON VIOLENCE

God is a maniac, just like me.

--Bobbie Gotteson

Violence in America has been the subject of countless American plays--an indication of how much the event is at the deepest core of our preoccupations. Now Joyce Carol Oates, best known as a novelist but the author of several plays as well, has come up with her theatrical rendering of this aspect of American life in “The Triumph of Spider Monkey.”

Based on her 1976 novella of the same name, it is a transfixing look that offers no new insights but stares hard and long at two things: the social havoc wreaked when human affection is withheld; the appalling confusion in our society between celebrity and notoriety--or, to quote the play, a vision of “the anti-Christ as Christ.”

That vision is obvious from the moment you walk into the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s Theatre 4, the experimental space where this production is housed--its walls plastered with sensationalist headlines (“America’s Most Appealing Mass Murderer,” for one).

It is also immediately perceptible (in terms of emotional consciousness) in the chilling eyes, placid baby face and off-center voice of Shaun Cassidy as the serial murderer/musician Gotteson (pronounced Got-son but no doubt standing for “God’s son”), centerpiece of this sacrificial collage.

In “Spider Monkey’s” depiction of Bobbie’s life, a model could have been found in Jack Henry Abbott, the subject of another alarming play about the roots of violence (“In the Belly of the Beast”).

The patterns are the same. Bobbie is abandoned at birth in a locker at New York’s Port Authority, progresses inexorably from orphanage to serial foster homes, reform schools, prisons. The story is as ancient as it is depressing.

In his free time--literally and euphemistically--Bobbie writes songs, falls into opportunistic performance as a porno film actor and sometime singer, and fancies himself unique (how else do you compensate for the total absence of human love?). It becomes his ticket to acting outside the law--human law as well--and sordid “success.”

The study is at once nerve-wracking, off-putting, too busy and profoundly sad. It is skillfully embroidered on an abstract frame that sets off an array of lurid characters who invade Bobbie’s misbegotten life like ravenous sideshow freaks.

These range from his celebrity-greedy defense attorney (Rick Hamilton), to a bumbling fool of a prosecutor (James Siering), a praying mantis/mother figure/aging porno queen Melva (Doris Dowling) and the succession of innocent young women the machete-wielding Bobbie slices up on the road to self-affirmation.

Oates (strongly aided by Cassidy’s complex and vivid performance) excels in showing us the doomed innocent struggling at the heart of Bobbie’s ravaged being--a pathetic creature more sinned against than sinning. This is the ceremonial/ritualistic aspect of the play Oates declares (in a program note) that she consciously pursued.

Where she errs is in overstatement. The story’s ramifications go on and on without deepening in thought or widening in scope. We get the message early; it doesn’t develop or change and shouldn’t take so long to put across.

Director Al Rossi makes good if sometimes overly contrived use of Douglas D. Smith’s multi-level set (well lit by Kathy A. Perkins and complemented by Susan Nininger’s excellent costumes), but he’s not always able to control his actors. Hamilton and Siering are silly stick figures (one suspects as written, too) who stand out jarringly against the ampler backdrop of more fully fleshed characters.

Aside from the astonishing Cassidy, Gerald Hiken turns in a gorgeous performance--abundant and rich--as a paternal convict who befriends the young Bobbie, momentarily offering him the only real affection he’ll ever know. And Dowling is to be admired for a commanding, unflattering portrayal as the lusty, tainted Melva.

All of the women in the company, in fact, do a particularly sensitive job in brief, difficult, often thankless roles--one of the prices to pay in works of this departmentalized, choppy nature.

It is also, in the final analysis, what makes “Spider Monkey” curiously unsatisfying. Perhaps this would be different if it had something newer to impart. But between the socially anguishing nature of its discourse, its vulgarian trappings, its rancidity and disharmonies (music by Fredric Myrow and Cassidy seems deliberately unappealing), the sum becomes much less than its disjointed parts.

‘THE TRIUMPH OF SPIDER MONKEY’

West Coast premiere of a play by Joyce Carol Oates presented by the Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theatre 4, 514 S. Spring St. in Los Angeles (213-627-5599). Director Al Rossi. Set design Douglas D. Smith. Lighting Kathy A. Perkins. Costumes Susan Nininger. Sound design Jon Gottlieb. Musical score, arrangements, direction Fredric Myrow. Songs Fredric Myrow and Shaun Cassidy. Lyrics Joyce Carol Oates. Music production Michael Lloyd. Stage manager Jill Johnson. Dramaturg Mame Hunt. Cast Shaun Cassidy, Paul Mackley, Thomas Nixon, Rick Hamilton, James Siering, Molly Cleator, Jonathan Palmer, Kerry Noonan, Peggy Schoditsch, Gerald Hiken, Doris Dowling, Allan Kolman, Patricia Estrin, Christine Avila. Ends Nov. 17.