Stage Light : Cast Helps Play Out of ‘Woods’

Writer-director John Benjamin Martin’s “Out in the Woods” at the Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center trods the same path as James Dickey’s “Deliverance.” That means imagining the worst possible outcome for a tight group of city guys getting together for some serious backwoods escape.

Just as Dickey pitted his men against the reality of a deeply primitive reservoir of male sexual confusion, so does Martin, only with wisecracks to spare.

Alternately smart and contrived, “Out in the Woods” becomes so obsessed about the notion that inside every heterosexual male is a homosexual guy just burning to get out, that you have to wonder as much about Martin’s priorities as you do about his cabin-cocooning fellows.

Nearly every character has a one-track mind, and each one so adheres to the playwright’s agenda that you begin to lose the sense of individual men in the din of mouthpieces.

What finally cuts against this oppressive approach to laughs is a consistently strong cast in which every actor finds his or her individual quirk.

The foursome of Tom (Peter Hawthorne), Clem (Rod Sweitzer), Kim (Fuzzy Fusaro) and Mike (Robert Koch) has annually retreated to a cabin in the woods to bond and get away from it all, especially the women in their lives. Cabin caretaker Ron (Bob Sutton) ushers them in with the air of Supreme Tough Guy. This cleverly sets up a tone of machismo that is immediately undermined as questions about Tom’s true sexual identity begin to pop up.

It seems things went too far in the woods last year (in this ultra-wordy play, Martin avoids dishing details) and it’s left a queasy feeling behind, especially for low-key Mike, who tells Kim he thinks Tom is a closeted gay. This unleashes a logical line of paranoid behavior that could only end in comedy or tragedy. Fortunately, Martin opts for the former.

He also opts for another story line involving Kim’s fiance, Kimberly (Lisa Peterson), which goes from bad to worse. It ends with Kimberly hysterically brandishing a weapon and discovering her hidden lesbian nature.

Martin seems to be implying in this ultra-adult show that there’s something about nature that makes our sex drives go kooky. By the time Kim and Mike have hired a stripper-hooker named . . . um . . . Goldie Bush (Fusaro), to dance and do the nasty, all the men get so touchy-feely that almost nobody goes to bed with Goldie.

Even Goldie’s burly manager-bodyguard, Brick (Martin, in a droll turn), reveals his insecurities. But when Brick plays his own gay card, you realize that Martin has played his own gag past the breaking point.

The actors handily wade through the silliness, led by Hawthorne’s nervously taut Tom, Sweitzer’s agreeably calm Clem and Fusaro’s stressed Kim. Cleverest of all is Koch as Mike, quietly sneaking around the sides and edges of the cabin, an intriguing amalgam of Iago and beach bum.

Fusaro brings total credibility to a role most actors would pass on, lustily stripping and delivering a hilarious monologue on Goldie’s job’s professional requirements. Utilizing the theater’s high spaces, Sidney Wickersham’s amusing set includes an “upstairs” woods and some clever hideaway surprises. Carol Doehring’s lights and John Zuehlke’s light effects take us deeper into the forest.

BE THERE

“Out in the Woods,” at the Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center, 11006 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 2. (818) 343-6967. $12-$14. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.