‘Violencia’ Proves True to Its Name

If, in defiance of all taste and common sense, you insist upon seeing Peter J. Nieves’ “Violencia” at the Lost Studio, you may have to dip into your Y2K stash of Prozac a little early. Nieves, who also directed this protracted purgatory of a play, obviously subscribes to the assault-and-battery school of play writing, in which craft, motivation and context are eviscerated by shock value.

Scenes of nonlinear degeneracy are thrown together with little regard for form.

The play lasts almost three hours, but the barrage of extraneous unpleasantness proves wearying after the first five minutes. The staging is sloppy, the lighting self-consciously murky. From what little we can derive about the plot, we surmise that these characters are amoral pleasure-seekers intent on violating moral taboos and pushing the limits of human sensation to grisly new levels. But even that’s an iffy guess.

Perhaps Nieves intended his “dramedy” as a sendup of the darker-than-dark genre so prevalent in current theater. But it’s all relentlessly pretentious, sustained at a pitch of hormonal excess.

Nieves bludgeons home the message that people are violent and vile, predators and victims trapped in an unending cycle of moral depravity. But it is the play that seems unending--and the hapless actors, a few of them genuinely talented, who are the real victims here.

*

* “Violencia,” the Lost Studio, 130 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles. Fridays and Saturdays, 9 p.m. Ends Feb. 5. $15. (323) 769-5809. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.