Opening a Quirky Dialogue on Gods, Mortals, Heaven’s Gate

What was going on in the minds of the 39 Heaven’s Gate cult members who committed suicide in March in their rented mansion in Rancho Santa Fe?

The answer won’t be found in Scott Feldsher’s world premiere, “U.S. Highway Love Slaves--Part 3: South of Heaven,” at the Sledgehammer Theatre here through Sunday. But the play is still a fascinating, if dangerous and confused, rumination on gods and mortals, mythology and passion.

Instead of Do and Ti, the nicknames for cult leader Marshall Herff Applewhite and his partner Bonnie Lu Nettles, we have Do (Navarre T. Perry looking eerily like Applewhite) and Re (graceful, charismatic Julie Jacobs looking impossibly lovely dancing around with a shaved head in the nude).

Do and Ti, who took their names from the musical scale, long maintained that they were extraterrestrials inhabiting human forms. Feldsher takes their theory several steps further. He imagines a Greek- and Roman-style pantheon of gods in which Re, the daughter of one god (voice-over by the deliciously hammy Brian Salmon), begs her father for a chance to inhabit a human body and shine on Earth, if only for a short time.

Re and her assigned protector, Do, then come to Earth and recruit souls attuned to their divinity. Re seduces a hard-boiled journalist, Nick Fortune (Duane Daniels, a strong, smart leading man with a Philip Marlowe/Sam Spade delivery). And when she starts falling for him, this, with an Elmer Gantry-like twist, indirectly leads to her destruction.

Feldsher, artistic director of Sledgehammer Theatre, has a reputation for assaulting an audience’s senses with blaring lights, sounds, silences, images. This show too begins with a bombardment through the airwaves, as an onstage video-transmitting man, Ozzie (Josh Stoddard), struggles to make sense of the gods interrupting the normal broadcast.

But then, as Josh Chambers’ original chant-like music starts to take over, it goes into emotional, poetic and mystical territory--places where Sledgehammer has never gone before.

There are allusions to the Christ story, with a Judas-like betrayal, and an affirmation of life after death as a triumph of love. There’s even a bit of Woody Allen’s “Mighty Aphrodite” in the scene where angels in loincloths sing “Cheek to Cheek.”

Set and video designer Michelle Riel created a surreal stage design that spirals up to create different levels. Among the haunting little touches are paper-doll cutouts of the dead ascending to heaven.

But even as Feldsher and his talented, hip crew weave theatrical magic, one wishes he had expended his considerable efforts on a story that made more sense.

Sure, no one can say for certain whether the Heaven’s Gate cult went up to the next level as they believed they would. Maybe Applewhite and Nettles were the divine made flesh. Maybe the only difference between a religion and a cult is size and tax breaks. But chances are, no one outside Heaven’s Gate bought its story or they too would be dead.

And is Feldsher really trying to tell us that God will come to us in the form of a cult leader? And if he did, what with all the trouble in the world, the best thing he could find to do is wear purple robes and chant?

Of course, an attitude like this is why plays like “South of Heaven” take swipes at the media.

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* “U.S. Highway Love Slaves Part 3: South of Heaven,” Sledgehammer Theatre, St. Cecilia’s, 1620 6th Ave., San Diego. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Sunday. $10-$15. (619) 544-1484. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Navarre T. Perry: Do

Julie Jacobs: Re

John-Andrew MorrisonRaphael

Josh Stoddard: Ozzie

Duane Daniels: Nick Fortune

A Sledgehammer Theatre production of a play written and directed by Scott Feldsher. Composer/musical director: Josh Chambers. Sound: Jeff Ladman and Paul Peterson. Sets/videos: Michelle Riel. Lights: Ron Vodicka. Costumes: Michele K. Short. Dance/movement: Al Germani. Stage manager: Rachel Louise Lopez.