Bittersweet ‘Melody’

Ron Link is a gifted director who is sometimes called upon to helm mediocre material. However, when Link’s pyrotechnical signature style ignites a play worthy of his talents, the result can be dazzling.

Set in a Buffalo strip club in the early 1970s, Dan Gerrity and Jeremy Lawrence’s “Melody Jones,” now at Theatre/Theater, struts a fine line between craft and crassness. Thanks to Link and his superb design team, especially costumer Judith Curtis and choreographer Dorian Sanchez, the risk pays off.

A reprise of the 1992 production at the Cast, the play, based on David Galloway’s novel, resounds viscerally and metaphorically. On one hand, it is a flesh show, with plenty bared and little left to the imagination. On another level, it is the campy, funny but ultimately poignant tale of Melody Jones (Gerrity), a deformed and saintly homosexual strip club owner whose yearning for romance proves his undoing.

In the most profound sense, the play is a bittersweet parable about the surrender of sensibility to sensationalism in a society poised on the brink of endemic tastelessness. In the five years since the play was first produced, tawdriness has proliferated, from Jerry Springer’s TV show to the recent scandal allegations in Washington. Gerrity and Lawrence’s prescient piece seems particularly timely at this juncture in our cultural misfortunes.

Tessie (the marvelous Gloria LeRoy), an aging twirler from burlesque’s heyday, is an exponent of a more innocent age when imagination and restraint still played a role in commercialized fantasy. By contrast, Brenda (Christina Whitaker), a silicon-augmented stripper with calisthenic “specialties,” heralds the harsh new realities of the strip biz.

Under Melody’s nurturing aegis, the Melody Bar staff coalesces as a kind of family. There’s devoutly Catholic go-go dancer Sandra Mae (Leslie Sachs), the tough but tolerant bartender Joe (Matt McKenzie) and sweetly sexy Mary Louise (second-generation stripper Stephanie Blake, who lends sizzling authenticity to the proceedings). Club drummer and pianist Chip (Antony Alda) lives for sensual gratification but realizes that life must offer more. Not so for aging homosexual Sammy (Loren Freeman), a flamboyantly spiteful number who accepts the occasional covert fling as his lot in life.

But if, as Melody touts in his club act, “ecstasy and reality meet” at the Melody Bar, they remain obdurately separate in his personal life. Melody benevolently assays the dramatis personae of his sanctuary from behind the two-way glass of his office aerie. When he emerges from his voyeuristic bell jar and falls in love with a young married man (Jimmy Shaw), the stage is set for martyrdom.

“Melody Jones” is a successful hybrid, both an allegory surprisingly rife with religious symbolism and a spangled, bangled entertainment. Long after the final curtain, it will keep your mind twirling.

BE THERE

“Melody Jones (A Striptease in Two Acts),” Theatre/Theater, 1713 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends March 29. $20-$25. (888) 566-8499, (818) 789-8499. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.