Alien Comedy Captures Women

Into every woman’s life, a little brain death must fall.

The symptoms: unlikable kids, insane pets, talking televisions, too many self-help books. And a tremendous desire to see “Six Women With Brain Death . . . or Expiring Minds Want to Know” over and over.

“Brain Death,” a sketch comedy and musical revue opening Friday at the Forum Theatre at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, has been known to strike such a chord with women that they see it multiple times. The first time, they bring their husband or boyfriend. The next time, they bring their female friends.

Director Karon Kearney, who is also in the cast, knows from previous experience. In 1988, she went to Scottsdale, Ariz., to do the show for six weeks. She was there for a year and a half.

“Brain Death” hasn’t been seen in the Los Angeles area since 1989, when a production at the Los Angeles Theatre Center drew mixed reviews. Daily Variety called it a “highly energized, sometimes searing revue.” The Times said it was “predictably raucous, usually funny but too often skims along.”

But it has been popular--not critical--acclaim that has been the hallmark of “Brain Death.” In San Diego, the show ran for 22 months and grossed more than $1 million for the often-struggling San Diego Repertory Theatre. It was revived in Scottsdale in 1991 and again ran for more than a year.

When things were really humming in Arizona, Kearney said, the show took on a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” quality. Women in the audience would lip-sync with the songs, do the choreography in their seats, even come dressed as their favorite character.

“It’s the kind of show that if you do it right it’s really, really great,” says Kearney. “If you do it wrong, it sucks.”

Key to getting it right, it seems, is not taking it seriously. At all.

Granted, Kearney says, the show has its poignant moments. But it also has a song about kamikaze poodles who sacrifice themselves to stop a gang of pit bulls. TVs that talk back to couch potatoes. And sexually active Ken and Barbie dolls.

As crazy as it sounds, it strikes home. Peggy Pharr Wilson, among the six women and two men who wrote the original show, says women waiting by the stage door used to tell her: “You must have been in the room with me; my friends and I had that exact conversation.”

While men certainly enjoy “Brain Death,” it is unapologetically for and about women. Grown women. And it hovers just on the edge of bad taste. It’s not that it’s dirty or racy, says Kearney, but there are scenes . . . such as the one about pubescent horror of inserting your first tampon. The women laugh hysterically, she says. “And the men are all going, ‘Huh?’ ”

(Producer Mark Edelman, whose Kansas City-based Theatre League usually does family musicals like “The Sound of Music,” even seemed a little uneasy. “Now you have a good excuse to leave the children at home!” he stated in a press release about the show. “Just don’t bring them!”)

“Brain Death” was created in 1986 by a group--plus some friends and acquaintances--involved in a production of “A Christmas Carol” for the Missouri Repertory Theater in Kansas City. Over potluck dinners, Wilson said, the group started swapping tabloid stories. Then they told their own stories. Somehow, the two--plus songs by Mark Houston--melded into “Brain Death.”

“We didn’t expect it to be a big hit,” Wilson says. “We were just doing it as an artistic exercise.”

The exercise, though, never entirely ends for Wilson. “Brain Death” was undeniably a product of the 1980s and reflected the problems inherent to a spend-spend-spend economy, just-say-no public policy and tabloid-television culture. So it has been Wilson’s job to work with local productions like the one in Thousand Oaks to make the show up to date. In with Hale-Bopp hysteria, out with Nancy Reagan. She has updated it even since an April 1996 revival at the San Diego Rep and has hopes for an off-Broadway production.

But just because it’s topical doesn’t mean it’s political, Kearney says. Her primary direction to the cast has been to have fun. “If there’s something personal or political, great,” she tells the other five actresses. “But you’re there to get the laugh.”

And that’s the best approach, according to Wilson, who has seen productions both good and bad.

“People have problems with it if a director tries to take it apart and find the secret meanings,” Wilson says. “There are no hidden meanings. It’s based on tabloid stories. If you try to make it Ibsen, you’re in trouble.”

BE THERE

“Six Women With Brain Death . . . or Expiring Minds Want to Know” starts Friday at the Forum Theatre in the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. 8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through Sept. 14. $17.50-$21.50. (805) 583-8700.