‘Seduced’: Parody of Success and Sanity

How does it benefit a man if he gains the world but loses his ever-loving mind?

Well, it depends on how batty he is in the first place. If he’s Henry Hackamore, the wealthy, Howard Hughes-like recluse in Sam Shepard’s “Seduced,” his delusions of omnipotence could trickle down into reality. Power corrupts, but absolute power just might confer immortality.

At least, that’s one way of looking at the play, now at the Alliance Theater. “Seduced,” in best Shepard fashion, could be subject to the most far-flung interpretations. Shepard is not for the weak-kneed, and Mark Roberts’ staging is certainly firm in approach, if not always sure-footed.

Written in the 1970s, when Howard Hughes was still very much in the public eye, “Seduced” is Shepard’s venture into parody, an obvious send-up of Hughes’ much-vaunted eccentricities. In fact, save for a keen undercurrent of nastiness, the play’s tone is surprisingly playful.

At least, that’s the tack that Roberts and his cast take in their rousing, almost vaudevillian treatment. Joel Stoffer plays Hackamore as a leering dotard; Hackamore’s bodyguard Raul (Steve Liska) is prototypically stoical; Suzan Fellman and Kristen Cloke, who play a couple of Hackamore’s former lovers, are, respectively, a torrid vamp and a flat-out bimbo, with no holds barred.

All, from Stoffer’s overblown lecher to Liska’s requisite straight man, could have been lifted straight out of a burlesque house comedy sketch. And that playfulness plays well much of the time, particularly in enlivening Shepard’s circular dialogue, which could prove maddening in a more ponderous context. But occasionally, Roberts and company sacrifice substance for stereotypes. Those stereotypes are well-rendered, to be sure, but they lack a vital component, that foundation of psychological realism that must underpin Shepard’s preposterous parable at last, if we are to derive any lasting meaning from it.

The action is set entirely in Hackamore’s sterile desert compound, just south of the American border. The symbolism is obvious. Like Hughes, Hackamore has carved his chunk out of the American dream while remaining an obdurate outsider. Other parallels to Hughes abound. A pioneer aviator, Hackmore made billions in the aerospace industry and was an obsessive womanizer--until his horror of microbes reduced him to hands-off voyeurism. Now a deranged phobic, he languishes, sustained by constant blood transfusions and memories of past glory.

In Matthew Jacobs’ handsomely stark production design, the claustrophobic set looks like a portable operating theater, a germ-proof bastion in which the doddering Hackamore awaits--what? An ignominious death, or a transcendent transformation? After all, this is Shepard. It’s your call.

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* “Seduced,” Alliance Theater, 3204 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends May 20. $15-$17.50. (323) 655-8587. Running time: 2 hours.