Theater Review : ‘Wars’ Goes Into Savage, Funny Turf

It’s no coincidence that one of the characters in Vince McKewin’s “Ad Wars,” at the Court Theater in West Hollywood, makes a reference to “Dr. Strangelove.” Indeed, McKewin’s play owes a spiritual debt to Kubrick’s bleak farce.

No, doomsday isn’t imminent in McKewin’s savage satire. The threat to civilization is more subtle than that, but it is manifest. Hogs at the trough, these folk are motivated primarily by greed. Fall into the sty and you just might get eaten.

The piggies in question work at a high-powered Madison Avenue advertising agency. It’s 1991, just after Desert Storm, and America is still preening over its futuristic display of military technology. The time is right for the agency to segue into new territory--namely the marketing of a bomb.

First scheduled to be produced at the Pasadena Playhouse, a version of “Ad Wars” was canceled when the Gulf War broke out. The producers feared that, given the national climate, the comedy would fall flat. How ironic that the play, which was subsequently updated, now opens in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. It’s a triumph of McKewin’s skill that, in the midst of tragedy, his play remains hilarious--and painfully, presciently relevant.

The play’s bomb campaign is a relatively inconsequential one in financial terms, but flubbing it would mean that the agency could lose its biggest and most prestigious account. It also means that company honcho Dick Hurley (David Dukes) would lose his shot to become the agency’s new president. With stakes so high, Dick’s already evanescent sense of morality takes a permanent sabbatical.

Working against the clock, Hurley summons the most brilliant minds in the agency to wow the client, Billy Davis (John Bennett Perry), an ultra-patriot who makes John Wayne seem like a bleeding heart. Abetting Dick in the campaign are Dick’s scheming arch-rival Jill Koenig (Stephanie Zimbalist) and market researcher Fred Iwanoski (Danny Goldman), who abhors Dick so violently that he will only deign to attend Dick’s meetings via speaker-phone.

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For account supervisor Patrick Boyle (Tim Ryan), a Gulf War combatant newly returned to civilian life, the stakes are also high. Never mind that Patrick’s former lover, agency secretary Sheila McFadden (Teryn Jenkins), the moral center of the piece, is urging him to leave the money and run. If he clinches the account, Patrick stands to have it all. The price is small--only his soul.

Director Jenny Sullivan’s deft staging subtly caricatures McKewin’s comic characters without veering into travesty. It’s not often that a director is blessed with solidly funny material and a dream cast, and Sullivan makes the most of her comic opportunities.

And from soup to nuts, “Ad Wars” has a dream cast. A stalwart stage veteran, Dukes manages to make even his pointedly amoral character engaging. Zimbalist has the barracuda aggressiveness of Bette Davis on steroids. Sarah Ann Morris, who plays a fledgling account executive harried by Billy’s sexual come-ons, delivers a stirring “I Am Woman” speech that leaves the audience cheering. And even Tom Astor, filling in for regular cast member Stephen Kay at a moment’s notice, turns in a surprisingly assured performance as a coke-addicted art director whose scruples have gone the way of his nasal membranes.

* “Ad Wars,” Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega, West Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends May 28. $20. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.