Downward spiral

THE new theater season looked so promising back in August. It still does, honestly -- there's much more to come before it's over, no doubt including a couple well-wrought productions that'll teach a bitter reviewer to love once again -- but in these first several weeks, satisfying shows have been maddeningly hard to come by.

Las Vegas Little Theatre ran hard with The Distance from Here, but fell under the bus of author Neil LaBute's awkward, out-of-touch dialogue. Same thing happened when Cockroach Theatre's solid cast performances were undercut by Mac Wellman's glib and dated 7 Blowjobs script. Even the Strip's normally reliable commitments to practiced talent and high production value were completely missing from pointless Point Break Live!, which bagged its engagement at Planet Hollywood's V Theater after running less than a week.

So I've been asking myself, "Am I being fair? Have things really been this bad? Am I just in a mood these days?" And I'm answering those questions as truthfully as I can: "Yes I am," "Yes they have," and "I swear I wasn't until now."

The disappointment and hunger pangs for good stage worsened last weekend at Onyx Theatre with Down the Rabbit Hole, a one-woman show created and performed by independent actor/singer/dancer/spoken word enthusiast Erin Jividen. It's about a young woman, Erin, who comes home to visit her parents after many years away as a "successful writer living in New York City." Never mind what it is she writes (we never find out, though magazines are implied), or that this character jibes with the "successful writer" persona about as much as she does with a boxer or astronaut; the important thing here, apparently, is we're told Erin's a successful New York writer so we won't forget, no matter what she might do or say to contradict it, what a fiercely bright and sensitive achiever this woman is on top of being sexy. Call it "career-reliant characterization" or, more simply, "the death of art."

Erin starts poking around her old bedroom, getting tipsy after two sips of Chardonnay and storming memory lane with help from fairy tale books, a high school annual, an improbable array of old costumes and a diary. All these things she finds strewn around in plain sight in a bedroom we're to understand she occupied until at least age 18, although the pink, puffy space looks more suited to an overprotected preteen -- a bewildering design decision and harbinger of even scarier things to come.

Ironically, this play is all about becoming older and wiser, and that's where the fairy tales come in. Erin periodically cracks open a book, reads aloud a hyper-condensed version of some timeless story (acting oddly unfamiliar with each one) and then riffs on its theme in a way meant to show how cynical, savvy and Sex in the City she's become since childhood, now finally dispensing with all the illusory, happily-ever-after-with-Prince-Charming lies she once believed before the trauma of, say, losing her husband, who's just left her for another man.

"What do you say when he's gay?" Erin sings again and again, shrugging in coy, cutie-pie fashion during a song that long outlasts the lyrical ideas to fill it. What do you say to whom? To him? To yourself? How about making a guess? It might turn into something interesting.

The same pullback happens when she decries modern concepts of beauty, saying, "Fake boobs, fake ass ... what's next?" Well, lots of things have already come next -- botox, permanent makeup, labiaplasty for Christ's sake -- but that's not the biggest problem; Erin's observations here are valid as far as they go, sure, but in terms of originality or insight, nothing's being added to this troubling conversation that hasn't been there since 1970.

Sadly, this is the case with every issue that's semi-addressed in Down the Rabbit Hole, and there are lots of them. Jividen jams references to teen violence (murderous hip-hopper Little Red Riding Hood in a scarlet hoodie), eating disorders (Goldilocks is both anorexic and bulimic), incest (Sleeping Beauty gives maudlin sobs over memories of her father's abuse) and several other social ills into a script already teeming with men who fart, leave toilet seats up and generally disenchant in a perfectly Married With Children way.

Then there's the frequently confused language: "Can you believe it or not," "crawl up in a ball," games of "Truth and Dare."

Then there's the painfully forced verse. In Wonderland, why does Erin call Alice's unexplained eight-hour orgasm her "stage"? Because it rhymes with her neglected cat's "hunger and rage."

Worst of all, especially near the end, there's the wanton substitution of any honest sentiment or character accountability with an unending stream of nonsense as Erin sings of smiling again, dancing naked in the rain, the picture-perfect life, living every moment in the sun, loving me for who I am, letting me live my life, the trust and faith that will teach us, living free, letting go, loving my soul, not settling for empty tears, and even eventually finding her real Prince Charming -- a man she's just spent two hours saying doesn't exist!

Will somebody please, please put up a show that doesn't make me type out these awful things?