Parsons’ resurrection

The multimedia show “Taking the Jesus Pill” at the King King nightclub is a fanciful tale of sin and sinners, strippers, abuse, lust, betrayal, murder and redemption.

But there’s a real love story behind this production too.

Back in March, musician Charlie Terrell was just trying to get his new Southern gothic show off the ground. Melding a live band and actors with film, the regular Sunday night gig was conceived as a rock opera in the truest sense. Terrell, who wrote the script and music (with some help from film director Mars Callahan, who directs the play), narrates via songs he plays with his gospel-tinged country-rock band, in between dialogue from the performers.

The actors take full advantage of the King King’s layout -- the opposite of a theater in the round, with patrons sitting at a working bar in the middle of a circle and watching action unfold around them -- by walking through the bar and interspersed film, which was directed by Terrell along with his brother Brandon.

The plot goes something like this: A preacher (Nathan Legrand) abuses his beautiful daughter Tina -- and the Bible -- throwing parties in the name of the Lord while keeping his wife, Josephine (Irene Muzzy), drunk so she doesn’t notice his lechery. When Tina (Nikki McCauley) tries to run off with a mysterious James Dean-like figure named Johnny 3:16 (Brandon Karrer), her father doesn’t approve. Death, romance and religious redemption follow, in a performance that falls somewhere between “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “Romeo and Juliet.”

It all might have gone largely unnoticed were it not for Polly Parsons, the daughter of alt-country pioneer Gram Parsons. One night in March, she stopped by with a friend to watch the show because she had heard good things about it.

But at the time she was preoccupied -- she was working on producing two tribute concerts to her father, who died of a morphine-and-tequila overdose at 26 in 1973. Polly Parsons had been having a hard time finding someone to capture the spirit of her father in a raw, impressionistic montage at the shows, which were to feature performers such as Keith Richards, Norah Jones and Lucinda Williams.

When she saw “Taking the Jesus Pill,” she responded strongly. Very strongly. “I lost my mind,” she says, sitting in Terrell’s apartment on a Monday nearly eight months later. “Literally lost my mind.”

Of course, she hired Terrell for the tribute concerts. Not only that, Parsons signed on to be a “Jesus Pill” producer -- and a dancer in the show.

In “Jesus Pill,” Polly saw her father’s story come to life, with direct and indirect connections laced throughout. The soundtrack is full of the broken-hearted themes prevalent in Parsons’ best work. And in a key scene at the time when Polly first saw the play, a picture of the singer was on Tina’s mirror.

“I saw through the eyes of Charlie what life was like for my dad. His mother died a horrific death at a very young age, his father went crazy, he had an artistic passion, he had a true love -- my mother -- everything was very fast, everything was very brief, everything was very tangible,” she says.

“Watching Charlie onstage gives me the element of understanding my father as an artist -- and watching Charlie as a playwright gives me an understanding of the world around him at the time.”

It’s not so surprising that Terrell’s script relates so much to Gram Parsons, considering that they each found inspiration from many of the same roadsides, churches and seedy motel rooms before making their respective ways to Los Angeles from the South. Terrell was raised in Alabama, and Parsons spent much of his life in Florida.

Terrell wrote “Jesus Pill” in 1997 after he speculated on the life of a girl he met at a fireworks stand.

“I woke up and she was gone,” he says. “I went to the window and started thinking about what her life would be, and what it was. What I realized was that me projecting into this girl’s life actually became an investigation into my own self. I feel like all the characters in the play are me -- and they’re different parts of me.”

Terrell plans to continue to explore the play’s possibilities. In a perfect world, there would be more performer-audience interaction: “We want to get to the point,” Terrell says, “where people come to the stage [while the preachers] are doing the sermons, and yell things out.”

And the love story behind “Jesus Pill”?

Terrell and Polly Parsons recently got engaged.

Says Parsons: “My favorite part of this entire week has been the day that Charlie turned to me and said, ‘Let me get this straight -- am I going to be Gram Parsons’ son-in-law?’ ”

With that, Terrell looks at her and says, “That’s some big shoes to fill.”

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‘Taking the Jesus Pill’

Where: King King, 6555 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: 7 p.m. Sundays

Price: $15

Info: (323) 960-5765 or www.charlieterrell.com