Wrong-Way Street

Memo to playwright-director Michael Hebler: True stories do not always make interesting stories. In a program note for his new play, “Christopher St.,” at the Huntington Beach Art Center, Hebler says that it is “based on a biographical incident” and that “the locations and character names have been changed for protection.”

Whose biography this is based on is unimportant, and--given some of the nasty things that go on in the play--Hebler’s discretion is laudable. Yet if there were ever a case where an incident does not a play make, “Christopher St.” is it.

Things don’t begin well, as we’re presented with a trite array of young gay men in a Greenwich Village bar on Christopher Street. Conversation shifts to sketch of a kind of human comedy in the manner of Saroyan or early Lanford Wilson. Hebler finally focuses on the newcomer, a shy visitor from L.A. named Scott (Scott Khouri), who attracts both trash-talking Roger (Pyeshon Jackson) and openly manipulative Vince (Marcus Plasencia).

Did we say “shy”? Add naive and myopic. And ultimately stupid. Long after we’ve sized Vince up as an obvious hustler looking to score and, probably, separate Scott from his money, our clueless hero is still trying to put two and two together. Key dialogues involve Vince and Scott playing verbal one-upmanship, a game Scott has no chance of winning.

Hebler plays a dangerous game dramatically because he risks losing us; we assume Scott is too dumb or too horny to function with any sense. By the time Vince has corralled Scott on a mattress, Hebler has a central character we can no longer take seriously--or care about. He’s not compelling (Khouri plays him, deliberately or not, as a kind of blank, whitewashed yuppie in training), and he doesn’t seem to care what happens to himself.

In the program, Hebler emphasizes that he wanted to make a drama about young gay men in contemporary America that wasn’t associated with the theme of AIDS. Nevertheless, watching naive Scott place himself in a situation with a sexual predator such as Vince, with AIDS never mentioned, has an effect akin to putting the charged topic itself back in the closet.

As if he didn’t have enough potential but under-realized dramatic material to handle, Hebler tosses in unconvincing business involving a homeless boy (Walter A. Lutz Jr.), whom good-natured Scott befriends, and a killer whose appearance is unintentionally comic in Hebler’s weak staging. The story finally peters out with no real insight, no conclusion, only a softly ironic exit from Vince, still hustling.

There’s enough, though, that strong actors could lift it into something theatrically energetic. Plasencia suggests that he could play a low-grade Iago, but he’s not charismatic enough to make us feel that Scott is truly seduced. Khouri plays blandness in a boring way, while Jackson overdoes the flip, flamboyant type that’s such a cliche in plays with gay characters.

Wheaton James playacts as a homeless beggar, and Marcus Knight as Tender never feels comfortable serving drinks and barking at customers. Michael Thorstensen as Johnny is shackled with a one-dimensional role designed to lay out the play’s supposed survival-of-the-fittest theme; he could be a much more interesting presence if set free.

BE THERE

“Christopher St.,” Huntington Beach Art Center, 538 Main St. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday. Ends Sunday. $12. (562) 987-1619. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.