ROAD TO NIRVANA starring Eric C. Johnson
Source: Chicago Sun-Times

Dec. 3, 1997

Road to Nirvana

Arthur Kopit's "Road to Nirvana," an outlandish attempt to out-Mamet Mamet, grossly overstates its satiric purposes. Written as a spoof of David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow," it attempts to hammer home the moral decrepitude of Hollywood filmmakers who stoop to the most abysmal level of soul-selling for fame and fortune.

Though Trap Door tries to punch up Kopit's worn script with a drag role and multimedia embellishment, the playwright's repetitious script invades the action to tell us exactly how we're supposed to feel and react.

In short, "Road to Nirvana" doesn't transcend its shallow, mind-numbing subject matter. The drugged-out, booze-drenched, sexually omnivorous world of movie dealmaking, through Kopit's eyes, comes across not so much as shockingly decadent as a titillating exercise in excessive behavior. He essentially makes his point during a gross-out Act I finale. When the title character, the rock idol Nirvana (modeled on Madonna), finally appears in the second act, her entrance is anticlimactic.

The play centers on has-been filmmaker Jerry, who is invited by his former duplicitous partner-producer, Al, to get in on a big movie project involving Nirvana: a porn version of her life that parodies Herman Melville's "Moby Dick." Egged on by Al and Al's opportunistic girlfriend, Lou, Jerry desperately agrees to ludicrous tests of loyalty--from slitting his wrists and ingesting human waste, to being castrated at Nirvana's request.

Director Michael S. Pieper capably balances and understates Kopit's potentially overblown dialogue, which totters between slobbering affection and putrdi disdain. He subtly chips away at the fourth wall so that audiences are in on the charade together with the actors, who occasionally wink at their characters' banality.

Eric Johnson gives Jerry a pathetic, yet dry-humored, edge that makes his portrayal endearing in a goofy deadpan way. As his hyperactive counterpoint, Al, James Leary slithers and seduces with an air of flamboyant self-loathing, while Sarah Charipar's Lou moves elastically from calculating femme fatale to servile snit. Aaron Boucher turns the minor role of the hunky butler, Ramon, into a stream of sizzlingly self-conscious innuendo.

The moment of truth rests with Sean Marlow, who has taken on the task of portraying the cokehead-rocker Nirvana--in drag. Granted, men in drag flaunt their charms quite regularly on Chicago stages, so this twist is not particularly earth-shattering.

What makes this directing choice so exotic is Marlow's breathy, mystical, almost ethereally sensual portrayal. When Nirvana comments on how this is not really her body, she's only visiting it, the sexually ambiguous implications create a disarming clamor.

--Lucia Mauro