Hard-hitting piece about sex, drugs, illness and death

In “Gay Times Requiem,” a new dance-theater work by Eli Glazer that opened Thursday at Highways Performance Space, there are many manifestations of crucifixion on display: physical, emotional, spiritual. Then there is the pain Glazer imposes on the audience with his 2 1/2-hour melodrama, which, in spite of its many flaws, slams you with indelible imagery.

Currently Los Angeles-based, Glazer hails from Tel Aviv with a strong theater background. But this epic -- 29 scenes with headings such as “anonymous blind date,” “visit of the dreaded butler,” “deathbed” and “god help us” -- is in need of drastic editing. A tale of two men (Brandon Bateman and Hunter Lee Hughes are extraordinary) and their tawdry lives of sex, drugs, bathhouses, violence as aphrodisiac and the AIDS pandemic, it unspools unremittingly.

With no dialogue and mostly requiems -- along with a peppering of ‘30s croonings -- as musical backdrop, the couple are attended to by a Darth Vaderish, tuxedo-clad butler (Marc Cameron). He brings pills, he brings evil, he occasionally brings the voluptuous Rayne Aspengren, billed as “everybody’s dream girl, death.” Regan Forston also appears as a bum and other characters, all in need of rethinking.

The work, like life, is complex, but chokes on repetition and sadomasochistic leitmotifs: Watching Bateman strangle the life out of an AIDS-racked Hughes (early in the first act), is heart-wrenching. Why kick, punch and taunt him throughout, then? Finally, we yearn for these aching bodies to give us more dance excitement and less Glazer navel-gazing.

*

‘Gay Times Requiem’

Where: Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica

When: Today, Sunday, 8:30 p.m.

Price: $16

Contact: (310) 315-1459