Cynical, funny play takes pokes at Hollywood’s deceptions

By Joe Brown

Monday, Aug. 25, 2008 | 2 a.m.

A recent hit off- and on Broadway, Douglas Carter Beane’s cynical comedy “The Little Dog Laughed” is being staged in what may be the most dramatic venue in Las Vegas.

Not only is the Onyx Theatre ensconced in the Commercial Center strip mall — a fascinatingly eclectic enclave that includes a variety of Asian shops, several “adult social clubs,” a nationally ranked Thai restaurant and a roller hockey rink — but to take their seats inside the handsome, 100-seat black box space, patrons have to go through the Rack, a boutique specializing in leather apparel and erotic accouterments. The store’s name is an acronym for “Responsible And Consensual Kink.”

Waiting in line for theater tickets and playbills was never so ... distracting.

And then there’s the play — this is good stuff. Beane’s bracing, bitter comedy of bad manners and ulterior motives gets a smart, strong, well-acted staging at the Onyx, which has lined up what looks like a full season of provocative — and maybe upsetting — plays.

Beane introduces two Hollywood characters to two New York characters, all four of them embodying the worst of both coasts. Mitchell Green, a movie actor on the verge of becoming a household name, is in Manhattan with his power broker agent Diane, both of them hoping to woo a playwright into selling them the movie rights to his hot script.

As Diane acidly notes, Mitchell “suffers from a slight recurring case of homosexuality,” and he hires a young male escort, Alex, to join him for a touchingly inept encounter in his hotel room. When Diane (herself a lesbian) notices that Mitchell is beginning to have actual feelings for his boy toy — which would blow it for all three of them, career-wise — she spins into malevolent action.

All of these damaged characters — whores in word if not in deed, are sad and despicable — but in Beane’s hands, they’re also amusing, and their epigrammatic conversation bristles with stinging zingers. (When Alex turns down a cocktail, Mitchell comes back with “Why? Did life suddenly get beautiful?”)

Among other themes — the illusion necessary to construct truth, for one — playwright Beane is knocking on the Hollywood closet, one of the film industry’s most enduring con jobs, from Rock Hudson to Tom Cruise. And he’s needling complicitly credulous audiences and “perceived straight actors” who are considered courageous for playing gay characters.

John Beane (no relation to the playwright) plays Mitchell, and his resemblance to Jeremy Piven’s slippery Hollywood agent Ari Gold, from the HBO comedy series “Entourage,” is an added asset to a noteworthy performance. Beane is convincingly confused (and enraged), earning laughs (and winces) as he fumbles for words and affection.

Alex Bayless brings a bone-dry wit and an aura of utter self-containment to the part of Alex, the prostitute who is, ironically, the least whorish of the characters. His scenes with Beane — often in a hotel room bed — are a marvel of natural acting and comic timing. These actors are really listening and reacting to each other, not just speaking scripted lines.

Though he sleeps with older men for money, Alex doesn’t consider himself gay per se, and simultaneously carries on with New York party girl Ellen, who is herself milking an older sugar daddy she disdains. She’s the sketchiest character in the play, and Zoey D’Arienzo is still finding her way with the role.

Wielding a power handbag and a Katy Perry ringtone, making a meal of clients and competitors over deal-making lunches, Tressa Bern has a bravura turn as master manipulator Diane. The play’s toxic heart, she functions as both central character and Greek chorus, seamlessly switching between what she’s saying and what she really means. Diane’s tricky opening monologue presented a challenge to audience and actor alike on opening night, but by play’s end, Bern was in full control, a cat toying with three cornered mice.

Director Susanna Brent clearly gets the material, and though she might tighten the pacing a bit, it’s apparent that her production is only going to get better and better as the actors live their parts day by day — I plan to see it again.

Several things set this show — presented by Good Medicine Theatre Company — apart from what’s typically on offer in Vegas. The material is contemporary, controversial and challenging. And the conflicts and collisions here wouldn’t have the same impact if they weren’t being played out by flesh-and-blood humans right there in the room with you.

No one is happier than I am to report that live theater is alive and well in Las Vegas.