STAGE REVIEW : ‘Tiger Lilies’ a Drama of Hate Crimes

Occasionally you find a new play and production so well-crafted that the actors seem to be characters caught by a hidden videocam.

In Donald Wayne Jarman’s hate-crime drama, “Tiger Lilies,” at the St. Genesius Theatre in West Hollywood, we are hurtled into the world of gay-bashing as seen from the point of view of the perpetrators. Their names--Doc, Coot and Zip--echo the metallic, staccato beat of their hatred and the terse, abrupt force of this play, which is hard as a cue ball.

The bashers, brandishing their weapon of choice--baseball bats--meet periodically in a grungy back alley that looks like an ashen-colored street scene from “Fritz the Cat” (with great panoramic backgrounds of bustling Gotham by set designer Jimmy Cuomo and expert lighting design by James L. Moody).

The play’s strength is that there’s no preachment, no effort to psychoanalyze these guys or their problem. In this case, under Ray Young’s taut direction, character is action and theme, seamlessly spun. Their stilted, mundane lives take form after dark when their idea of an important time is “to drink a few beers and bash a few queers.”

The leader of the pack (a chilling Ken Harris) speaks for the trio’s warlike homophobia with the simple explanation that “it’s them or us.” One of the bashers (tall, rangy Richard Pachorek) is an unblinking zealot who in another life looks as if he could have made the cover of a men’s fashion magazine, and the third one (Charles Powell) is his younger cousin, the nominal innocent of the group who’s drawn in by default and because, well, “it’s family.”

The latter triggers the tragic climax by taking a part-time job in a landscaping and nursery shop run by the play’s fourth and final character, Eric, a young, decent, upfront guy (Richard Stockton)--who may or may not be gay. It’s unimportant and whatever you want to read into him you can.

But because he runs a shop that sells flowers (including the exotic orange Tiger Lilies of the title, a nice symbolic touch) he’s immediately suspected of “being one of them” by the older bashers.

The rhythm of the play jockeys back and forth between the back alley with its leather jackets, Levi’s and bats and the colorful florist shop, with the small stage remarkably accommodating the split locations. The play’s inherent sand traps--its schematic design and sense of alternating blackouts--are totally sublimated by its chiseled momentum.

Initially developed through a series of improvisations and originally presented as a workshop production last winter at the Greenwich Street Theatre in New York, the play is not merely a diamond in the rough. It’s a gem, period.

And its unconventional ending--which would be heretical in the movies or on television--works precisely because there could be no other ending.

“Tiger Lilies,” St. Genesius Theatre, 1047 Havenhurst Drive, West Hollywood, Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends May 17. $15. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.