Theater productions offer family misfortune, sexual shenanigans, Kafka fable

Slapstick Meets Slap and Tickle. ... In a gay bathhouse ... With a straight man.

Such are the sexually tinged shenanigans of "The Ritz," opening today at Las Vegas Little Theatre.

Playwright Terrence McNally's foray into farce was a naughty madcap pleasure when it bowed in 1975, set in a gay subculture still mysterious to curious heterosexual theatergoers in the pre-AIDS, bed-hopping '70s.

McNally's setup: In a gay bathhouse in Manhattan, hiding from his mobster brother-in-law with homicidal tendencies, a straight, portly Cleveland businessman runs across an assortment of oddballs including a smitten "chubby chaser," go-go boys, a studly detective with a voice worthy of Mickey Mouse, a talentless Puerto Rican singer named Googie Gomez, whom he mistakes for a drag queen while she thinks he's a famous producer -- and his own wife, who tracks him to the bathhouse and thinks her hubby is not only hiding from the mobster, but hiding in the closet.

Disguises, chases, mistaken identities and all manner of hilarity ensue.

As the cut-rate singer, Rita Moreno earned a Tony Award in the original Broadway production of a play that, for its time, titillated audiences with gay men in bath towels romping around a sexual playground. In pre-"Will & Grace" America, "The Ritz" was a sexually provocative surprise. Now it's merely a gay ol' time.

Tragedy as comedy? For those who really do laugh to keep from crying, "The Marriage of Bette and Boo" may be for you.

Staged at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas by the in-house thespians of Nevada Conservatory Theatre starting tonight, playwright Christopher Durang's cheery feast of family misfortune dares to turn stillborn deaths into a running gag. Rib-tickling, right?

This kooky cocktail of horror and hilarity rummages through three generations of genial chaos, chronicling, well, the marriage of Bette and Boo, who hope for a sizable brood, only to have an obstetrician regularly amble onstage, drop off a swaddled little bundle and declare it dead. As an exercise in existentialism that casts grief as a lifelong laugh track, the litany of adversity includes alcoholism, mental breakdowns, a stroke, cancer and senility, as well as a pessimistic priest fed up with counseling "stupid people" -- and who at one point imitates bacon frying. (Don't ask.)

Answers, explanations and meaning? Durang suggests that misery defies it all. But in "The Marriage of Bette and Boo," why let misery spoil your merriment?

Got a bug up your ... proctological body part?

Might be Gregor Samsa. Might not. But it's certainly Kafka, whose name also is an adjective, as in Kafkaesque, as in strange, nightmarish and mind-bogglingly odd.

Gregor infamously wakes up as a giant insect in the opening sentence of Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," just the sort of cracked mind-set appreciated by the Insurgo Theater whackjobs -- and we mean that admiringly -- as they present "Morphotic: A Kafka Fable," beginning today at the Onyx Theatre.

Described by Insurgo guru John Beane as "an original phantasm" that is "visually and stylistically startling" (are you humming "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" yet?), Shawn Hackler's play addresses that question torturing every artist's self-obsessed soul: Just what is an artist?

With original soundscapes, projections and choreography, "Morphotic," we're also informed, "is the manifestation of Franz Kafka's neurosis and self-loathing. It simultaneously explores his fictional work and wrestles with his real-life demons. Kafka was a man who seemingly understood the human condition while finding himself without the courage to deal with that insight."

Translation: Nothing Neil Simon-esque happening here.

So stroll in imagining tangerine trees and marmalade skies and hum a little pre-show ditty: "Franzie in the sky with diamonds ..."

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.