STAGE REVIEW : Way Off Broadway Gets a Little Closer With ‘Boom Boom’

It’s been nearly a year since Way Off Broadway opened with the spookily inept “Dracula.” The good news is that its latest offering, an explicit staging of David Rabe’s “In the Boom Boom Room!” is quite a leap over that toothy mistake. This basement playhouse in Santa Ana is beginning to show a glimmer of promise.

But the bad news is that Way Off Broadway still has miles to go. While certainly uncompromising and with a handful of worthy, earnestly acted moments, this production is still too inconsistent to merit much more than a mild nod.

To be sure, theater founder Tony Reverditto has picked a difficult vehicle to take Way Off Broadway in the right direction. Rabe’s bleak story about the naive, sexually abused Chrissy and her frustrated hopes of finding an identity in an exploiting world is a messy work from Scene 1.

Sensational but not satisfying, and superficial to a fault, the play reads like a reckless ride over some pretty stark terrain. Rabe veers from incest to prostitution to mental illness to drug abuse to the confusion in homosexual relationships to the confusion in straight relationships to an abstract discourse on women’s rights. Too much has been crammed into the tour.

To his credit, director Reverditto knows how complicated “Boom Boom” is and gamely tries to keep the many scene changes merging gracefully. For the most part, he is able to accomplish this with brief blackouts and ‘60s music (some Stones, Hendrix, Aretha Franklin) as segues.

The theater has also improved its look this time around. As with “Dracula,” the ambiance is bargain-basement utility, but at least now there’s some invention in evidence. Reverditto and Shawn Smyth have given everything a monochromatic cast (costumes, backdrops, even shopping bags and a coffee container are painted black). The symbolism is a little thick, but the effect does help to create a uniform sense of claustrophobia and paranoia.

But there’s trouble even here. The only exceptions to this strict color code are the wildly hued costumes worn by the go-go dancers at the downbeat club where Chrissy works. The Boom Boom Room is suppose to be a grim metaphor for Chrissy’s delusions (she dreams of dancing ballet, but has to settle for shaking it in a cage for leering men), so why make it the production’s only brilliant vision?

As Chrissy, Layce Gardner is expected to carry the show; she’s in just about every scene, and the spotlight never drifts far from her. Gardner, who is able to convey Chrissy’s reservoir of innocence, holds her own. There’s one scene where she explains to her wacko father why she carries a Thermos at all times (to make friends by giving them coffee whenever they need it) that is touching and true. Gardner, however, is less effective at revealing the side of Chrissy that has been coarsened by all the predation around her.

Some of Gardner’s better support comes from Michael Gaffney as a sympathetic gay neighbor (his fit in Act 1 is something to see), Shawn Smyth as Chrissy’s simmering hood boyfriend and Brenda Beals Winton as the Boom Boom Room emcee who befriends Chrissy. Richard Flin completely overdoes it as the drugged-out Ralphie, but it’s kind of fun to watch him do an eye-popping impression of Charles Manson on angel dust.

‘IN THE BOOM BOOM ROOM!’

A Way Off Broadway production of David Rabe’s drama. Directed by Tony Reverditto. With Layce Gardner, Michelle Fashian, Richard Flin, Michael Gaffney, Herbert L. Jensen, Michael Kemp, Kathie Kennings, Terri Miller, Lisa Mayberry, Tony Reverditto, Shawn Smyth and Brenda Beals Winton. Sets and lighting by Reverditto and Smyth. Plays Thursdays through Saturdays through Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. at 1058 E. 1st St., Santa Ana. Tickets: $7-$9. (714) 547-8897.