STAGE REVIEW : A Fascination With Society’s Outcasts

Borrowing a few riffs from Sam Shepard’s idolization of Old West desperadoes--and desperadoes in general--Thomas Babe’s 1977 black comedy “Billy Irish” goes Shepard one better. In “Irish,” at the 3rd Street Theatre, Babe uses those riffs to make a few very lucid points about modern America’s fascination with bad guys, from Jesse and Frank James, through Bonnie and Clyde, and culminating with the cult worship of Charles Manson.

The action explodes on a ruined front porch, all that’s left of a Vermont farmhouse, in 1976. Brothers Billy Irish and Joe Witness (short for Jehovah Witness) consider themselves modern forerunners of a new breed of outlaw, spinning their own history out of the same pure imagination that spawned their “outlaw” names. Their pipe dream idyll is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a young couple who claim to be the modern Bonnie and Clyde, operating under explicit instructions from the “savior,” Charlie Manson.

Spiraling to an inevitable conclusion, much of the play is as silly as Shepard’s untrue West, but Babe’s fascination with language and the games that can be played with it is often intriguing and generally quite funny.

At his older brother’s deadpan suggestion that they “finally get it on” together, Billy says, “But we’ll have to do unnatural acts.” Joe mumbles, “This is incest--we can do anything we want.” Babe has an infallible flair for making a line say one thing while meaning something else.

The dialogue is crisp and rife with subtle twists and turns of meaning and shading, and requires a close listen to catch all of Babe’s convoluted sendups and the rough-edged poetry that flows through the writing. Though the shape of the playwright’s statement has a ring of nostalgia today, much of what he says about the public and the media’s hero worship of society’s mistakes is still valid.

Jonathan Mittleman and Grant Brittan are excellent as the brothers, particularly Mittleman’s kinetic, detailed portrait of Billy, with a mind seemingly garbled from 10 years as a junkie, but more lucid in his imagery than the others and frighteningly logical in the play’s denouement. Juliet Landau is often touching as the lost flower child grasping at any affection to salve her half-imagined torments, but Lance Brittan barely makes a dent into the character of her bubble-headed boyfriend, and he’s the only member of the cast who looks like he’s acting.

Directed by Michael Ewers with a keen ear and a solid feel of tension in his staging, the production looks very good on Devin Meadows’ ramshackle porch.

At 8142-A West 3rd St.; Fridays through Sundays, 8 p.m.; ends Oct. 28. $10; (213) 447-0534.