STAGE REVIEW : Steven Berkoff’s Machismo Diary

Most men on location in Acapulco, filming something as mindless as “Rambo II,” would probably spend their off hours with a margarita or a Magdalena on the beach, or drowning the bad taste by bellying up to a bar and letting it go at that. But Steven Berkoff isn’t most men and he doesn’t let things go. So he wrote a play instead--not about the making of “Rambo II,” but about the extras and bit players and blow-hards with whom he traded chatter at the bar.

Berkoff has called “Acapulco,” which he directed and which opened Saturday at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, “a painted study of people’s moods and spirits.” That’s putting a poetic face on it. Scratch “Acapulco” (not too deeply) and you’ll find it to be the stuff of locker-room conversations. There are two ways to look at a play that offers that: as a merely tiresome and offensive avalanche of male machismo absurdissimo or the way playwright Berkoff chooses to see it--as a humorous (read affectionate) portrait of lost boys with no other subject of conversation than sex, sex, sex and women as its object.

Pathetic? Well, that, unfortunately, is the third totally valid way of looking at it. Combined with the first (tiresome and offensive), it can be deadly. If you think you fall into this category, “Acapulco” is not for you. But no matter how hard Berkoff tries to paint a grotesque raunchy/funny picture, this most vivid and original of sometimes indulgent writers can’t help coming up with some gems. True, he has given most of the best speeches to his alter-ego, the Steve character at the bar (John Horn), who is just aloof enough, bemused enough and tipsy enough to jump into the conversation at choice moments with choice words.

The rest of this rogues’ gallery is far less appealing. It includes a whining Brooklynite self-hater named Will (Tom Flynn), an English-speaking cipher living in Mexico named John (Michael Sollenberger), a tough-talking Yugoslav braggart named Voyo (Richard Vidan), an inscrutable bartender (Sam Vlahos a.k.a. Sam Markis) and Karen (Chandra Lee), an American bimbo, surely descended of Lady Bracknell, who has an ongoing screaming fit about losing her handbag. Let it be noted here that this is an equal-opportunity play; women have as much right as men to be on their worst behavior.

In typical Berkoff fashion, Craig E. Lathrop’s setting is simple--an unembellished bar that straddles the width of the stage, with a giant sketch of Stallone as Rambo above it. The characters schmooze, complain, show off and swing in and out of reality, talking to the audience as they might to themselves. The switching is subtle, effected mostly by slight shifts in Doc Ballard’s lighting. Importantly featured in the background is a melancholy musical thread composed by Rory Anton that underscores the poetry and offsets pulchritude.

“Acapulco” is not, however, your typical Berkoff play. It is, for one thing, linear and, unlike “Kvetch” or “Greek,” very nearly naturalistic. It feels like what it is: the dramatization of a personal journal. The result is episodic with a series of arias that find only their own culminations.

Within this framework, Horn, who gives an uncanny performance as a Berkoff look-alike and sound-alike, has some great speeches, in particular an account of the making of the documentary of “Rambo II,” which puts the puny barflies in their place and him at the head of the class. Those barflies have their moments too--one anyway, when Vidan, Flynn and Sollenberger indulge in a joint imitation of Rod Steiger in the taxicab scene from “On the Waterfront.” But their characters are intrinsically shoddy, which is part of the play’s problem. The evening officially belongs to Horn, through whose observations and reactions we receive not only a sense of the event, but a composite, lyrical image of the good and bad of Mexico as well.

A final word: This writer missed the first 10 minutes of the play because of failing to register the 7:30 p.m. Saturday starting time. Apologies to all, but especially to Lee, who has her biggest moment at the opening.

At 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Thursdays and Fridays, 8:30 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 7:30 p.m., indefinitely. $17.50-$22; (213) 477-2055.