‘Kegger’ finds itself a little too topical

“Four guys rent the ultimate party house next to Cape Canaveral, and prepare for an endless summer of babes, booze and rocket launches

So read a press release for the play “Kegger,” which opened Jan. 30 at the Complex in Hollywood.

Uh-oh. Less than two days after the opening, the Columbia shuttle disintegrated.

That evening’s performance of “Kegger” was canceled. Not only did the play sound unfortunately frivolous, given the circumstances, but in one plot twist, one of the party animals hears that the shuttle in question will actually be a giant billboard and claims he’s going to sabotage the launch as a protest against the commercialization of space.

The show resumed the following week. “The only similarity is that we talk about shuttles and rockets being launched,” said playwright and co-producer Alexander Hrabe, but the plot’s would-be saboteur never comes close to actually doing damage. No spacecraft is destroyed in the story.

Hrabe said he initially saw his script as a play about “a transition from boyhood to manhood,” but that it acquired additional meaning in the wake of the Columbia catastrophe. “It was more about how people deal with an atmosphere where disaster is prevalent.”

The production had been scheduled through March 2, but it closed prematurely last weekend. Hrabe said this had nothing to do with the Columbia -- one of the actors got a much more lucrative gig as a stand-up comic. But Hrabe said he believes the production will “reconvene” at some point.

-- Don Shirley