During one of his many desperate rants in Hurlyburly, the character Eddie tells the stripper Bonnie that whereas earlier people had a "divine onlooker" to appeal to, all he has are "bureaucrats who are devoted to the accumulation of incomprehensible data" and "a bunch of aging insurance salesmen whose jobs are insecure." Panicky and near despondent, Eddie reaches out for anything that can make him forget, momentarily, his anguish: pot, coke, alcohol, sex.
But nothing works: The higher he gets, the more confused he becomes, and as a climactic tragedy pushes him to the edge, he goes nearly mad in the search for cosmic rationality. Certainly he can borrow no comfort from his friends. His housemate Mickey, another coke addict, finds just about everything in life laughable; his best friend Phil responds to life's complexities by punching out strangers and shoving a friendly blind date out of a moving car; and his lover Darlene can't even remember which man's child she aborted. Baffled by a universe that seems to have no purpose, anchored by no values except intoxication and sensual pleasure, Eddie and company lurch from one debacle to another, flail about in a stoned-out haze, fail to touch anything, including bottom.
This is 1980s America as seen by author David Rabe in his brilliant, epic drama: untethered, chaotic, swirling out of control. If it weren't so dreadfully recognizable, you might just call it a nightmare.
But that would be too easy. What Rabe suggests in this startling work of theater is that never before have so many people had so many resources to spend on so much insignificance. Most of the characters in Hurlyburly are articulate and intelligent, but for no useful purpose. They believe in nothing that can't be drunk, smoked or snorted; their deepest desires are to succeed in a world of false surfaces. Eddie and Mickey are Hollywood casting directors, which means they hire people to act fictions; Eddie's girlfriend Darlene is a fashion photographer, also devoted to deceptive images, and Phil is an actor whose main usefulness, Eddie tells him, is as a "prop," as phony "background:" "The more guys like you they got looking like the truth, the more bullshit they can spread all around you."
In this hoax of a community, the sexual populist Bonnie has to believe that the balloon that she dances with raises her stripping to an "art," and Mickey finds his dignity in being "flip" rather than "sarcastic." But essentially they're all terrified of the silence of the infinite spaces. As Phil says, "Nothing is necessary, Eddie. Not a fucking thing! We're in the hands of something, it could kill us now or later, it don't care."
Or as Mickey characteristically puts it, "I mean, we're all goin' fucking under, so how about a little laugh along the way?" The Sea of Faith that Matthew Arnold saw withdrawing in the 19th century has completely dried up for these contemporary desperados, and Eddie and friends have nothing but a desert to contemplate outside their picture window. Or maybe the more relevant poem is Eliot's "Wasteland:" "But at my back in a cold blast I hear/ The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear."
The current Jobsite Theater production is imperfect, in some cases badly cast, but even so packs a lot of power. Its strongest actors are all female: Katrina Stevenson as the stripper Bonnie, Meg Heimstead as Eddie's ambivalent girlfriend Darlene and Sarah McKenna as the teenage "care package" Donna.
As Bonnie, Stevenson gives one of her strongest performances ever. Dressed in a tight jeans skirt and a low-cut top (designed by Summer Bohnenkamp and herself), she bursts onto the scene offering joie de vivre and easy sex. But it's after she's been manhandled by short-tempered Phil that Stevenson shows us the human being behind the bubble-headed appearance, the angry, self-respecting woman who insists that "I am a form of human being just like any other!"
Equally effective is McKenna as the teenage waif Donna whom Artie finds in an elevator and donates to Eddie and his friends as if she were a homeless cat. Donna is the only really hopeful person in Rabe's play, and McKenna plays her charmingly, winning our sympathy and holding it throughout. Impressive also is Heimstead as the maddeningly noncommittal Darlene: Her argument with Eddie over which restaurant to go to has so many meanings that you'd need a scorecard to keep them straight.
The men in the cast aren't nearly as persuasive. Best of all is Steve Garland as the constantly amused Mickey, though after a while his habit of tittering at everything becomes a little tiresome, and we can't help but wish there were other facets to his portrayal. Ryan McCarthy as protagonist Eddie offers his all-too-familiar vulnerable-young-man-in-an-uncaring-world stance and only comes to fit the frenzied worldview of the play as he approaches mental meltdown in the very last scenes.
Jobsite Artistic Director David M. Jenkins is a gifted comic actor, but with his roundish physique and jovial face, he's not the least bit convincing as the violent bruiser Phil. And Dan Khoury as Artie simply doesn't project: Instead of a slick Hollywood screenwriter, he comes across as pale and reticent.
Despite some less than effective performances, director Jason Vaughan Evans keeps the action of this lengthy (three-hour) play moving so efficiently that one doesn't notice the time. Brian Smallheer's modern living room set is so attractive, one could stay there overnight. And in just about every case, Bohnenkamp and Stevenson's costumes are fine — costuming has become a dependable strength of every Jobsite show.
And so has courage: Hurlyburly is a scorching comment on life without moral or spiritual values, where pleasure is everything and never enough. Even with its odd casting, this production is one of the most satisfying plays I've seen all year. It's tough and uncompromising and surprisingly philosophical. It's everything serious theater ought to be: candid and coherent and cold-bloodedly intelligent. You don't have to be a druggie — or employed by the film industry — to recognize its truth.
This article appears in Aug 15-21, 2007.