STAGE REVIEW : A Rowdy ‘Road’ to Hollywood

Remember the “Road” pictures? Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour on their merry way to Rio, Hong Kong, Singapore, Morocco, Utopia, You-Name-It?

Well, Arthur Kopit’s “Road to Nirvana” is not that exactly, but it is a raucous spoof of Hollywood that outspeeds David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plow,” which it also handily outgrosses (as in grossing out). “Road’s” empirical bad taste is at times so stratospheric that the play, which is having its Los Angeles premiere at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, turns out to be quite a great deal of fun.

One prerequisite: a strong stomach. This roiling crucible of bad taste and stinging satire has eating scenes from hell, for which one gives a categorical thanks-but-no-thanks.

It also has scenes of threatened surgical intervention that will have you in stitches (sorry). But forewarned is forearmed: If you can get past the intentional crudeness to the satirical edge, you may find you’ll enjoy it.

“Road to Nirvana” is an angry, lurid diatribe aimed at easy targets everyone loves to hate: fringe Industry types who act like baboons and will set your teeth on edge while your stomach churns.

Al (Ron Orbach) and his companion Lou (lissome Taylor Donlan in a mini-bikini or less) are wooing Al’s old buddy Jerry (Sam Anderson) to direct a movie that should make them millions.

Al is a small-time producer and dope head with a big-time ego who has a script so hot it’s between asbestos covers. Lou is a psychic bimbo who is Al’s connection to the author of this priceless wonder. And Jerry’s the former friend Al once badly betrayed and fired. To say Jerry hasn’t exactly prospered since that breakup is to put it mildly, and he’s trying to puzzle out what exactly Al is after now.

What Al is after is commitment. Real commitment. Ridiculous commitment. You have no idea how ridiculous--and how real.

Kopit’s gambit grows broader, his plotline wilder and his barbs deadlier as we swing into Act II. That’s when Jerry gets to meet the author of this opus magnum. Her name is Nirvana (Merilyn Carney), a rock star with a few kinks and requisites of her own.

It’s all a jest, but you can feel the flame of Kopit’s slow burn roasting the self-delusion and outrageousness of recognizable movie folk. The jokes lie mainly in the toilet, but their motives are dead serious: to hold a mirror up to Hollywood’s harlotry. Easy target, as noted earlier, and old, too, but even while Kopit is often a real bull in a used china shop as he tackles the enemy, you have to laugh.

Smartly, director Ron Sossi doesn’t sweeten or soft-pedal any of it and Anderson is a splendidly despairing Jerry, a nebbish whose eyes grow as big as saucers with every fresh assault on his troubled persona (to say nothing of his actual corpus).

Orbach is the consummate boor, a big, noisy oaf who rams his way through life. And the two women--the blithe, statuesque Donlan and the furtive Carney--careen wildly from making sense to speaking in tongues.

Frank Mora, on the other hand, is the model of the smart-alecky servant we’ve seen through the ages, from Seneca and Plautus to Shakespeare, Ibsen and Moliere. He feels and acts superior to his masters so that any request for service, no matter how absurd or abject, can’t faze him.

Set designers Brian Alan Reed and Merry-Beth Noble along with lighting designer Lawrence Oberman have created quite an environment for the smoldering second act. But what sticks with you as you leave the theater is the raunchiness of the territory explored, the cult of mediocrity lampooned and the extremis of celebrity presumption and silliness that are the real butts of this elaborate, slightly overextended, well-aimed joke.

* “Road to Nirvana,” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Dec. 15, Jan. 5, 3 p.m. Ends Jan. 12. $17.50-$21.50; (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

‘Road to Nirvana’

Ron Orbach: Al

Taylor Donlan: Lou

Sam Anderson: Jerry

Frank Mora: Ramon

Merilyn Carney: Nirvana

An Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presentation. Producers Ron Sossi, Eric Vennerbeck. Director Ron Sossi. Playwright Arthur Kopit. Sets Brian Alan Reed, Merry-Beth Noble. Lights Lawrence Oberman. Costumes Pauline Cronin. Choreographer Tony Selznick. Production stage manager Michele D. Mischo.