Truth About Future Sex Is Way Out There in Amusing ‘G-Files’

The seventh installment in the American Renegade Theatre Company’s series of new one-act plays is “The G-Files,” a trio of science-fiction works.

G is, of course, the seventh letter of the alphabet. But this title is particularly fitting, given connotations of the letter in other phrases, such as G-string and G-spot. These are some sex-obsessed futurians.

“Double Blind Date,” written and directed by Barry Thompson, is a bleak picture of human interaction 50 years from now. Outbreaks of various contagion have led to a ban on nearly all forms of touch between humans.

In this setting, the Pleasure Palace is to sex what the speak-easy was to booze during Prohibition. Two anonymous figures meet in a room for a rendezvous--but it is slowly, and cleverly, revealed that these are “love dolls.” They are controlled by humans in adjacent booths. This is what it means to have sex in 2048.

Only when one love doll breaks down do the human clients Don (Blane Wheatley) and Eve (Wendy Alexrod) come into contact. The contrast between their true personalities and the bold demeanors they adopt for their dolls is quite funny, no doubt inspired by the sex chat that occurs on the Internet.

Eve and Don behave like two 14-year-olds who have just emerged from a class on venereal diseases: curious but terrified. Here, though, Thompson’s script slows considerably while these two circle each other, delivering stilted lines about their feelings. His direction, too, could have shown how the initial attraction between Eve and Don is heightened because it is forbidden.

Kurt Sinclair is amusing as the malfunctioning male love doll. His counterpart, played by Debra Brenda, is at her best toward the end, when she is a foil for the shy Eve.

Sex is only an undercurrent in “Splice,” the best of the three “G-Files” entries. The setting for Michael T. Folie’s play is the future, but its themes--greed and the desire for immortality--are timeless.

Ronald Dowling (Pat LaRocca) is 136 years old, and his life-broker Sugora (Erin Renee Horn) has run out of tricks to keep his heart ticking. So she has Dowling cloned--except with improvements that will keep his body at a firm 25 years old. The clone (David Billotti) has ideas of his own, however.

Billotti gives a strong performance as the cocky clone who has nothing to lose. Horn, with her black leotard and blond hair, resembles Madonna in both looks and willfulness--though the role might benefit from an approach that is more coolly sexy and less shrill. Jeeves (Deborah Burns) is an appropriately stiff automaton-butler.

Director Lois Weiss makes the best use of the Bitter Truth’s wide but shallow stage, keeping “Splice” moving both visually and dramatically. Hers was the one work on the bill in which you wanted to see more, not less.

The weak interlude between “Date” and “Splice” is titled “Angel on Earth.” The whole thing plays like an improvisation exercise: “You’re the last man on earth and all you have is a blow-up sex doll. Go!”

Written and directed by Billotti, it gets laughs at first from absurd images like Johnny (Duff Dugan) cradling and comforting his blow-up doll. But then he starts to talk to her. Moreover, the doll (voiced by Mary-Michelle Trinity) asks questions as though she’s some sort of high school guidance counselor. The strange quasi-religious overtones at the end are completely out of place--if something can be out of place in a play that is directionless.

Each of “The G-Files” would have benefited from better--even if scarcer--sets, or at least furniture not shrouded with black sheets. The centerpiece of “Angel” looked like the stacked front and rear bumpers of a Honda Accord. And even in a minimalist staging, a “bed” shouldn’t be four feet off the ground.

BE THERE

“The G-Files: Double-Blind Date, Angel on Earth and Splice,” at the Bitter Truth and Sweet Lies Theatres, 11050 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Feb. 22. $8. (818) 763-4430. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.