SAN DIEGO COUNTY : STAGE REVIEW : Sledgehammer Delivers With a Forceful Drama

The idea that killers are made, not born, is the message in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s tormented “Pre-Paradise Sorry Now,” now playing at Sledgehammer Theatre’s latest hit-and-run location: 420 1st Ave., between Island and the railroad tracks.

Scott Feldsher, artistic director of Sledgehammer, has taken Fassbinder’s play, based on the real-life story of serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, and transformed a script without a single stage direction into a driving drama of vignettes. Under Feldsher’s direction, the story points forcefully at connections between an authoritarian religious upbringing, violence towards women and gay males, the erotic menace of a snuff scene, identification between sex and death, and the Nazi philosophy that can lead people to justify destroying what they call subhuman forms of life.

There is a repeated theme of two versus one, beginning with the young Ian being whipped by a priest and a nun, continuing with two men raping an office worker, and culminating in the team of Brady and Hindley singling out vulnerable individuals to kill together. Just as some couples rejoice in bringing forth new life, in this world of inverse morality these two delight in bringing forth death.

Under Feldsher’s taut direction, the actors seem to burn with the anger that fuels their characters. An excellent ensemble of Martin Katz, Walter Murray, Todd O’Keefe, Melissa Reaves, Paty Sipes and Linda Castro, dressed in stark, black and white costumes by Cynthia Wood, is as kinetically in motion as the harsh and blaring sound design by Bruce McKenzie. McKenzie (also currently performing in “Albanian Softshoe” at the San Diego Rep), brings a sense of twisted torment to the leading role of Ian, and Dorrie Sharee Board seems appropriately big, blonde and devoted as Myra, Ian’s fantasy Valkyrie goddess of a woman. There’s a touch of Lady Macbeth in her performance, as she takes her man’s idea of shedding blood and encourages him to bring it to its natural conclusion.

Robert Brill, the remarkable resident set designer for this company, plunges behind a scrim into the considerable depths of the warehouse where the show takes place to portray the living quarters of Ian and Myra. The ensemble wreaks its havoc on the narrow stage, spilling, at times, out into the audience area. Dave Cannon’s video design is a continual reminder of the all-too-real outside world in which such madness prevails.

This production has already laid itself open to some criticism that it exploits, even as it condemns, the violence and pornography it depicts. That is a judgment that doesn’t seem called for here. Horror for the heart of darkness in this story drips as surely as the blood on the stage.

Performances at 10:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, through Sept. 30. At 420 1st Ave., between Island and the railroad tracks.

Editor’s note: This review did not run in its entirety in Friday’s edition. The following contains what was dropped in error.