Bottom line theater

The biggest laugh at last Sunday's matinee show of Bermuda Avenue Triangle came when audience members heard this actual exchange between freeloading Lothario Johnny Paolucci (John Ivanoff) and Tess la Ruffa (Lisa Illia), the aging Italian mother stereotype he's seducing (along with, on the sly, her Jewish mother stereotype friend played by Marylin Atkins):

"You smell great! What is that?"

"Ben-Gay."

That's it. That's the joke. He asks her what she's wearing and she tells him he's smelling an over-the-counter analgesic heat rub for old people with sore muscles. He was acting all like she was sexy, but she's just old and sore!

Now imagine you're sitting in a packed theater. You see this seduction scene unfolding with the same car-wrecky involvement you'd offer 15 seconds of a late-night life insurance commercial, then you hear that "punchline" delivered and before you can even wrap your head around the emptiness, 100 people around you erupt. They're laughing at the joke. Somehow, some way, in a world already inured over time to an ultra-cheese Catskills legacy and Woody Allen's worst excesses, the people in this theater allowed themselves to be instantly convinced this joke was not only witty, but deserving of raucous guffaws.

Now imagine shooting yourself in the face.

I'm going to pretend I don't understand Las Vegas Little Theatre's business model or the sheepish geriatric season-subscriber audience in whom it fosters such deep and lasting intellectual bankruptcy. Maybe I didn't really see the bed-headed elderly woman in the lobby stoop down to pick up her ticket while saying quite loudly to no one, "I dropped it!" It's possible I didn't hear the irritable, creaky shouts of "Turn the air up!" right in the middle of LVLT's perfunctory donation pitch. Maybe the Ben-Gay joke would have been funnier if the auditorium hadn't actually reeked of an acrid Ben-Gay-and-Elizabeth-Arden blend so penetrating I sneezed blood.

But even if none of these things really happened, there's still an undeniable reality this company decided putting up the relentlessly unfunny and almost universally dismissed comedy Bermuda Avenue Triangle was a good idea. A quick Googling reveals no clear-minded critic has ever enjoyed Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna's gelded two-women-and-a-cad sex romp, starting with the play's 1997 New York premiere, when New York Times reviewer Peter Marks used words like "ghastly," "ludicrous" and "humiliating."

Here's the thing, though: Marks also used "boorish," "cliche" and "antique," and those are words I'll admit, despite my not wanting to say any more than I already have about LVLT's programming strategy, cut to the dark heart of the matter better than the first three. Like the most savvy and cynical of entertainment execs, Little Theater has fully realized it's not necessary to offer a good, or even passable, comedy to its predominantly senior, fantastically undiscriminating set of subscribers. In theory, all the company needs to do is put someone on the stage and have them recite a list of disconnected words and phrases -- "Gas" ... "Rita Hayworth" ... "thankless daughter" ... "Ben-Gay" -- and audience members will respond positively, thinking -- hell, saying aloud -- "I know what that is. And they said it. On the stage. Hahahaha!" Seriously, this could actually work. And they could run a new production every week and the money would just keeping pouring in. I'm trying to help you, Little Theatre.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me. I'm going to take a very lengthy break now from writing this column. Not because I don't like it -- I love it, especially when it's about great shows, which happen all the time -- but because I've decided to stop reviewing other peoples' stage work and start creating my own to put out there. It's only fair. And in a local community theater environment populated by some of the coolest, most hard-working and effortlessly creative people I've ever encountered, it's irresistible.

In a couple weeks, watch for CityLife contributor David McKee's review of Insurgo Theater Movement's upcoming production of Euripides' Medea. It's a beautiful, harrowing play, Insurgo is a gutsy company and I'm betting he won't need to say anything remotely like what I've said about this one.