Theatre in Review: The Cheaters Club (The Amoralists/Abrons Arts Center)

	Serena Miller, James Rees. Photo: Russ Rowland

The company known as The Amoralists, according to its mission statement, "produces work of no moral judgment. Dedicated to an honest expression of the American condition, our ensemble explores complex characters of moral ambiguity, plumbing the depths of the social, political, spiritual, and sexual characteristics of human nature." Having seen The Cheaters Club, I think it may be time to add some kind of professionalism clause to the aforementioned list.

Such a clause might prevent the likes of The Cheaters Club, a bizarre mishmash of horror, farce, cabaret, and anything else anyone involved seems to have thought up during rehearsals. The plot of Derek Ahonen's play introduces four married New Yorkers (three straight, one gay) who take an annual vacation without their spouses, during which they run sexually amok. As one of them says, in a passage that will give you an idea of the author's way with words, "We're not shitty people, man. We do this to enhance our marriages, not weaken them. We go on vacation, handle our demons, and that's that. We don't wear fake smiles at home. We wear genuine smiles and have genuine love because we get that dark shit out once a year in an anonymous kind of way." (As an example of his marriage-enhancing techniques, a few minutes later, he is pressing the face of a passed-out floozy into his crotch, posing for suggestive photos.)

This year's destination is Savannah, where the quartet checks in to an inn run by an eccentric, faded Southern belle named Mama and staffed by her weird offspring. Big mistake: Mama's family has a casketful of secrets, and the cheaters end up entangled in a convoluted plot that takes in murder, grave-robbing, soul transference, reincarnation, witchcraft, mutilation, and other grisly events.

Even grislier are the attempts at humor, which aim to wring laughter out of nonstop vulgarities and out-of-context social commentary. Flossie, one of the play's army of loose women, keeps throwing herself at Lawrence, the hotel's bartender. "I'll let you put me in chains, Larry," she says. "I'll let you whip me. I'll let you pee pee on my face face." When Lawrence resists this enticing invitation, she complains, "I'm gonna let you pee pee on my face face, and you say no no?" Jimmy, the gay cheater, trying to figure out what is going on in one of the hotel's rooms, comments, "Unlike my asshole ... this door is locked." He also complains that his husband has "a disgusting paunch and the sex drive of a paraplegic." Even the undead characters talk like dirty-minded third graders: Having been summoned from the other side, a vengeful wife lashes out at her faithless spouse, bitterly noting, "You had to have your pussy and eat it, too."

Once the cheaters disappear, their spouses show up, hoping to retrieve them. Pat, Jimmy's husband, counsels them to stay rational, saying, "Let's not rush to judgment like a pack of Christians around AIDS." Daring comments, like this casual smear, seemingly pander to the Amoralists' fan base, stroking their prejudices while allowing them to feel enlightened. At the performance I attended, a group sitting toward the rear of the auditorium roared at and applauded this line, along with everything else; in front of me, a tomblike silence prevailed.

The action follows the same pointlessly vulgar path. The scenes in the hotel bar feature Piano Man, a silent, epicene creature waving an ultra-long cigarette holder, who tickles the ivories while Lana, Mama's untalented daughter, murders any number of ballads. Vonn, the sole black man among the cheaters, is kidnapped by Mama and held in bondage -- really, it would take forever to explain why -- allowing Ahonen to repeatedly exploit the spectacle of a black man in chains. The climax involves a resurrection ceremony that commences with the live participants eating human fingers. I see I'm leaving out the tour guide who is obsessed with the fire, in a movie theatre, that incinerated an audience of children; the conjure woman who prowls about in a voluminous peasant dress and extra-wide afro wig; and the many references to Geist Übernachtung, a so-called Night of the Spirits, which gets a lengthy explanation in the program in what I strongly suspect is a Blair Witch-style fabrication -- but enough is enough.

The end result is a work that violates every tenet of the mission statement listed above. Still, a lot of work has gone into The Cheaters Club -- among other things, it has a cast of 24 -- and, clearly, its aggressive tackiness is intentional. Somewhere along the way, I began to entertain the notion that, given its outlandishly bad acting (Ahonen also directed) and coarse and childish gags, The Cheaters Club may be an attempt at creating a kind of downtown Moose Murders. This would explain Alfred Schatz's cartoonish two-level set; Brad Peterson's flat, unflattering lighting; and Niiamar Felder's low-budget costumes. (Phil Carluzzo's sound is pretty good, especially when working up satanic bursts of thunder.) A preview piece about The Cheaters Club published on the TDF website suggests that Ahonen sees the play as a satirical battle between modernists and those who worship the past, but his witless script really can't bear that kind of scrutiny.

I'm pretty new to the Amoralists, a company that has garnered plenty of favorable press attention in the last several years. My introductory experience was Rantoul and Die, staged two months ago; an imperfect, but highly respectable, drama, it featured several gripping passages and at least two very fine performances. Everything about it was the work of professionals; The Cheaters Club is the work of professionals, too, although you'd never know it.--David Barbour