STAGE REVIEW : ‘Vipers’ a Freak Show That Blossoms Into Transcendence

L.A. playwright Ernest Kearney writes with a unique voice that’s part demonic and part phantasmagoric. This was evident in his earlier and wickedly imaginative “The Little Boy Who Loved Monsters,” about a bewitched youth who heard dinosaur voices. And it’s equally apparent in his newest play, “Among the Vipers,” at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles.

Vipers, of course, come in all forms, and the vipers in this play are human and zoological. Basing the core idea of his play on a news article about a man in South Africa who spent 40 days in a cage of vipers, Kearney has fashioned a freak show that blossoms into a tale of an impoverished man’s rebirth and even transcendence.

At first, the offer out of the blue is just a publicity stunt--albeit so dangerous that even Houdini would have blanched: a sweaty, hyper promoter promises big bucks and fame to a miserable, desperate husband if he will enter and spend three days in a cage filled with copperheads, rattlers and other venomous snakes.

The man, over the objections of his dowdy, screeching wife, agrees to go along with the bizarre scheme to garner some attention to his pitiable life and to lift his family out of poverty.

What makes the production intriguing as opposed to a sideshow is its artful staging and its thematic fiber. The snakes are represented by an ensemble of three female contortionists dressed in body stockings who sinuously curl, nuzzle and lightly stroke the figure of the caged, meditative man.

Director Jan Lewis and a movement consultant, Dagmar Stanec, have done wonders with this vipers nest, thanks in part to Story Theatre techniques and physical detailing comparable to the feline movements in “Cats.”

Kearney has really written a fable, a weird, bewitching drama that starts out like kitchen-sink theater and winds up with metaphysical import.

As the man in the cage (which set designer Paul William Hawker renders merely with four vertical poles), Peter Schreiner moves from fear to a state of near mysticism.

A bulky, blue-collar-looking guy, Schreiner is strangely captivating as he grows from obscurity to a stage of enlightenment. The vipers in the cage become his true friends.

Ultimately, he doesn’t want to leave the cage. He comes to see that the real vipers, the users, in his life are his wife (mousy Jill Holden, in faded housedresses) and the snarly, beleaguered snake promoter (the frenetic Neil Hunt with a rat-a-tat-a-tat Londonderry accent).

Contributing to the effect are lighting designer Doc Ballard’s pools of coppery light, defining the tremors and epiphanies of this seeming fantasy, a sci-fi story rooted in fact.

* “Among the Vipers,” 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m., Saturdays, 7 p.m., Sundays, 7:30 p.m., through Nov. 17. $11-$20. (213) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours.