FRINGE FESTIVAL : STAGE, MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : ‘MISS BARSTOW’

Early publicity intimated that writer/director Richard Newton’s “The Former Miss Barstow With Every Tom, Dick and Harry in a Doll’s House” was a scandalous piece of performance art involving lewd and shocking activities.

Yet in reality, this tame three-act play, based loosely on Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” disappointed those expecting the outrageous.

Performed on Saturday in the parking lot next to Al’s Bar, on the edge of Little Tokyo, “The Former Miss Barstow . . .” utilized odd scenery (automobiles, toilets, doorways), odd props (auto flares, cups broken against brick walls) and odd costumes (surgical uniforms, straitjackets) in an surreal, partly comic drama, with songs, on AIDS and safe sex.

The plot centered on Nora, a frustrated, naive housewife (played passionately by Nancye Ferguson), married to Tom (adequately played by Brian Doyle-Murray of “Saturday Night Live”), a hospital administrator in charge of giving AIDS tests. Nora is having an affair with Doctor Dick (played by Rikky George), who suffers from AIDS. Performance artist Glen Meadmore (also known as the Former Miss Barstow) is blackmailing Nora.

This is great stuff for a novel by the Marquis de Sade, but innocuous as a plea for tolerance and pointless as a comment on the AIDS crisis.