NORFOLK - IT'S NOT EASY to shock us. We're a Navy town.
Nonetheless, 40th Street Stage seems obsessed with the notion. This is the theater that produced a play in which Santa Claus was accused of having sex with several of his reindeer.
The idea had a chance of reaching the necessary "outrageous" plateau and was a refreshing respite from the ghostly cliches of "A Christmas Carol," but it came across as more heavy-handed and tasteless than daring and fun.
"Fat Boy," the latest effort, falls even shorter in its obvious effort to become the kind of stuff that absurdist intellectuals like to claim as their own. Subtle it's not. It features a bickering married couple who scream at each other - usually in demeaning the sexual performance of each.
Somewhere behind the scenes, perhaps in the rafters of the remodeled auto-repair shop that houses this theater, there is a bit of satire about tyrannical rulers and "human existence." If so, it's way in the background.
Rather than a play, it is a vocabulary list of varied obscene and scurrilous words - thrown out at random by Brad McMurran, the hapless actor who is assigned the thankless title role. He is asked to pull off a 90-minute temper tantrum of largely incoherent and unrelated naughty words. Any of these words, mind you, can be heard in most movie theaters around town. Shocking they aren't.
As for the comedy aspect: Laugh, I thought I'd never start. In fact, I don't think I did ever start.
There were two people in the audience who were in danger of falling out of their seats in convulsions. Perhaps they were relatives of members of the cast. Otherwise, it's difficult to explain. The rest of the sparse outing stared in stunned silence at the proceedings. After the final lines, they rose silently and passed out.
At curtain call, the lead actor commented, "Good. We're over early. Now, we can go home and learn our lines."
It is small wonder that this script would be difficult to commit to memory. It's mostly words rather than actual lines.
McMurran, to give him credit, is loud - a factor that succeeds in waking up the audience for moments at a time.
Almost actually achieving something of a flair is Amber Elizabeth Sarapata as Fudgie, his wife, whom he describes as a "hopeless cow," "a disgusting whore" and worse - much worse.
She greets male visitors with a plea: "I implore you, sir. Don't start taking off your pants. Let me help."
Fudgie joins her Fat Boy husband in unbridled ambition that is meant, one supposes, to satirize a craving for power that is universal. In any case, she fitfully tries to assassinate him so that she can become Queen Fudgie I - because, as she puts it: "Others should make things - and give them to me."
Simplicity reigns supreme, but perhaps it is more simple-minded than actually simple.
The supporting cast, maligned and used as they may be, seem willing to stick it out through the entire evening. Eileen P. Quintin is a drunken judge who swigs from her bottle with no need for a glass while she reigns over a courtroom of dubious morals. This is the same actress who was so good in her boyish titular role in the absurdist musical "Bat Boy," which ticket buyers should not confuse with the present title.
Christopher Bernhardt is assigned the role of the slave who is required, often, to kiss an overabundant part of Fat Boy's anatomy. Such commitment to "art" is apparently boundless. Bernhardt also is dutiful in modeling what has to be the shortest pair of short shorts on any local stage this season. The other multi-roles, from lawyer to tenant, are taken by Bill Armstrong.
As the play proceeds, one fitfully hopes that Fudgie and Fat Boy will develop the kind of barbed, poignant insults that were the mainstay of a stage couple like George and Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Fat chance.
The performers should not be blamed for this mess. John Clancy, an award-winning playwright based in New York, put this together. 40th Street Stage, though, should hire someone who can read before worrying about trying to bring life to the likes of this. If the script isn't there, no amount of caterwauling can right it.
Those who try to justify this choice will most likely claim that is was a forerunner of the so-called Theater of the Absurd brought on by the likes of Eugene Ionesco ("Rhinoceros" and such) in the mid-20th century. It's desperate reasoning.
The program notes suggest that there's a Fat Boy in each of us. Maybe so, but finding universality in this play is a stretch.
Amused we're not. Shocked we're not.
After all, this is a Navy town.
Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347 mal.vincent@pilotonline.com