Bogosian Leaves Piercing ‘Wake Up’ Call

Eric Bogosian came to the Irvine Barclay Theatre for one performance Friday night with a new work in progress called “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee.” Stalking the stage while embodying a variety of characters, Bogosian paused to acknowledge the irony of his success as an artist given to viciously skewering other people’s ideas of success. He only had to say, “Tonight, I’m in Irvine,” to spawn laughter in his audience, which seemed to appreciate irony. Here was a famously angry monologuist being embraced by a town known for everything he hates--conformity, security, manicured lawns, unauthentic ethnic restaurants.

In “Wake Up,” Bogosian is in top form, saying once again that in order to be truly alive you must see everything, especially the stuff most people work hard to avoid seeing. And Bogosian is here to help. He demolishes bromides. He makes fun of people who like to contemplate the miracle of snowflake diversity. He reexamines the life of Jesus with breathtaking cynicism. With any luck, the show will make its way back to Los Angeles in the fall, possibly under a new title.

Given the evening’s setting, one of Bogosian’s most effective characters Friday was Bill, the smarmy cheerleader for a model community called Cedar Woods. Bill introduces a new couple to the place’s many benefits. He stresses the low-noise, low-anxiety Utopian nature of the compound, which includes a medical center and a school within its perimeters. He breezes through details that grow scarier and scarier. No pets. Only two kids. We choose the color of your house. No “townspeople” allowed within the grounds, and guards are stationed within 100 feet of each other. Midnight rallies. Bonfires. Here’s a pin, and you have to wear it.

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It was as if Shirley Jackson could write great comedy.

Two characters from Bogosian’s last piece, “Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead,” reappeared. There was the heavy-lidded drug dealer who makes a compelling and harrowingly graphic case for inebriated sex as life’s greatest pleasure. Also reappearing is one of my favorites, Phil, a huckster selling the idea of complete selfishness (or finding the “inner baby”) as the latest in a line of boutique philosophies. Phil uses nifty gestures and rhetorical devices; in fact, he uses all the tricks of the hustler’s trade, recalling a string of familiar faces who prey on our vulnerabilities, from the cheapest TV evangelist to the most expensive politician.

Dressed all in black, his blue eyes vibrating intensity as he paces the stage, Bogosian rails, Lenny Bruce-like, against a droning existence, summed up by him as someone who gets up at 6 a.m. to grind the amaretto coffee beans and then goes into the office to boot up Windows 96. Of course, at this point, taking shots at Phil Collins may be too easy, and some quick references to Bosnia and concentration camps seemed entirely obligatory. But Bogosian is in great form with this show, which he plans to take to the Yale Rep and to Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in the spring. The director is Jo Bonney, his wife.

Then he’ll be back, even if he hates the idea that for his audience, “I’m simply here to help you build up an appetite for that decaf cappuccino after the show.” For Bogosian, the unexamined life is unthinkable, but the examined life isn’t pretty, either.