“Gangster Guignol”
Begin with a healthy dose of blood, add a rounded teaspoon
of sex, sprinkle it with profanity, top it with a layer of gory grand guignol,
and mix it with a gaggle of comically hapless, gun-waving gangsters. The result:
J.C. Ernst’s Goodbody, a cleverly conceived
black comedy in the Quentin Tarantino mode, now being offered by the Crook
Theater Company at 59E59 Theaters.
 |
| Raife Baker, Amanda Sykes. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
 |
| Raife Baker, Amanda Sykes. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
The action begins in medias res, so to speak, with the
lights coming up on a seemingly dimwitted young woman, Marla (Amanda Sykes), in
short black dress and black leather jacket, pointing a pistol toward the corpse—only
his legs are visible—of someone she’s just shot. Sitting nearby, suffering from
multiple broken bones, is Spencer (Raife Baker), a young man looking, as someone
says, like he’s been run over by a lawnmower: one arm is duct-taped to his
chest, the fingers of his other hand are also taped, there’s a tourniquet
around one leg, and his face and clothing are drenched in blood.
 |
| Raife Baker, Amanda Sykes. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Marla, apparently suffering from amnesia, says she has no
idea of what she’s done, where she is, how she got here, who Spencer is, or what
happened to him. She interrogates Spencer, whose pain-wracked efforts to take
control keep failing, about the situation and their relationship. Gradually, the
picture becomes clearer. Marla, we learn, is a cocktail waitress (from Gary,
Indiana, the script emphasizes for jokey purposes) at high stakes poker games run by a mafia-like
Irish family, the O’Learys. Heading it are two dangerously volatile brothers, Burt,
whom Marla’s just shot, and Chance (Dustin Charles). Spencer is what might be
called the brothers’ nonviolent fixer.
 |
| Raife Baker, Alex Morf. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Joining Spencer and Marla midway through is Aimes (Alex
Morf), a crooked but hilariously naïve cop, whose desk job with the police allows
him to do paperwork that protects the O’Learys. There’s a sharp rivalry between
the doofus Aimes and the sarcastic Spencer over Marla, whom Aimes loves but who’s
had sex (in a public bathroom) with Spencer. Spencer, by the way, calls Aimes
Twinky Twat for reasons that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the movie American Pie.
 |
| Alex Morf, Raife Baker. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
All the threatening horseplay we observe is bound up with everyone’s
involvement in a heist of the poker takings by Burt, and with the possibility
of Chance’s imminent arrival. The situation is even more fraught because of the
fear of how Chance will react on learning not only of his brother’s betrayal
but of his death. And, indeed, things do get hairy when Chance arrives in the
play’s last third and proceeds to torment the others until . . . Well, you may
think you know the drill.
 |
| Raife Baker. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
For a first-time playwright, Ernst, an actor who cofounded Crook
Theater with Raife Baker, who plays Spencer, shows a masterful command of fast
and furious, not to mention funny and filthy, dialogue. Some of his bits are
belabored and the play could lose a few minutes but he’s definitely on the
right track. He captures perfectly Marla’s mix of innocence and something much
darker; Spencer’s snappy, knowing arrogance and fear; Aimes’s straight-faced
idiocy; and Chance’s malevolent thick-headedness. As the situations evolve, Ernst
carefully peels away the skins of the various dramatic onions, exposing layers
of lying and deception.
 |
| Dustin Charles, Alex Morf. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
On the other hand, the bizarre conclusion, which garners both
guffaws and gasps, is surely over the top, but it’s not without sufficient foreshadowing.
Whether or not you approve, you’ll probably long remember it. The protocols of
reviewing prevent me from saying more other than to note that a bit of mid-play
exposition, where the play’s title is mentioned, helps prepare us for what
happens.
 |
| Raife Baker, Amanda Sykes, Dustin Charles, Alex Morf. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Before seeing Goodbody,
I read some of the script, immediately recognizing it as something with strong stage
potential if only it were well cast and directed. Reader, it is. Director
Firlit has elicited just the kind of humorously realistic tone required. Baker’s
Spencer never overdoes being a desperate man in physical agony; Morf actually
makes you like Aimes’s being such a jerk; Charles’s Chance has the sound and bearing
to convince you he means what he says; and the vocally rich Sykes squeezes Marla
for every drop of her twisted psyche.
 |
| Dustin Charles, Amanda Sykes. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
There’s nothing supernatural in Goodbody but its gruesome garishness guarantees it as Halloween-appropriate
( but for mature audiences only).
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
59E59 Theaters/Theater
C
59 E. 59th
St., NYC
Through November 4
