Chatting With God in ‘The Participant’

“The Participant,” Dayton Callie’s one-man show at Theatre Geo, has the irreverent edge of “Abel and Cain” (see above) without the intellectual heft. The show, directed by Jana Robbins and produced in association with Chazz Palminteri, opens with a character named Callie talking with an unseen presence who turns out to be none other than God himself.

By increments, we learn Callie’s persona has supposedly died. He thinks he’s in heaven, where he has high hopes that his fondest sexual fantasy will at last be fulfilled. However, when the two longed-for lesbians fail to show up with a plate of hot lasagna, this horny, hungry guy is forced to confront the fact that he may actually be in a more southerly location.

Callie’s engaging goombah is a vibrant comic creation, but there’s a lot of reiterative filler in this show, which is dangerously based upon the timeworn dramatic cliche of having a character chat with God to reveal his inner feelings. At intervals, Callie splices in some serious subject matter, but his dramatic elements are dealt with so glancingly that they seem an afterthought, and a gauche surprise ending trivializes the proceedings to the level of a comedy sketch.

* “The Participant,” Theatre Geo, 1229 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood. Mondays-Tuesdays, 8 p.m. Ends May 23. $15. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.