Technical marvels and some inventive directorial touches aren’t enough to rescue The Ghost Road Company’s Jocasta: A Motherf**king Tragedy from its performance-artsy approach to Greek tragedy and its lackluster lead.

 Sophocles fans will recognize the titular Jocasta (pronounced here as the Swedes might do) as the mother-turned-wife of Oedipus Rex, ordered by first husband Laius to put their newborn son to death because if he should live, grownup Oed will (according to a reliable oracle) slay his father, then wed his widowed mother.

Unfortunately for all concerned, Laius and Jocasta’s bundle of joy not only survives, he grows up to kill Daddy, marry Mommy, and unleash all sorts of incestuous hell.

 Press materials reveal conceiver-director Brian Weir’s aim to “show how women have paid for the actions of men for time immemorial,” a lofty goal that mostly gets submerged by clunky dialog, the collaborative result of workshopping a grand total of fifteen writers, a Ghost Road Company trademark.

 Playing second fiddle to Jocasta (Jen Kays) in this Oedipus Redux are Oeddie himself (Max Faugno), whose response to discovering he’s been screwing his mother is to give her privates a further licking; prophetess Cassandra (Kimberly Glann), who wishes that someone, anyone, would please just believe her spot-on predictions; Sphinx (Katharine Noon), a potty-mouthed adult-diaper-wetting tattoo artist who greets Jocasta with “I should have smelled you and that rank pussy of yours from a mile,” then goes on to wonder what it tastes like to bite through an umbilical cord; Medea (Christine Breihan), who counsels fellow cursee Jocasta to lay off worrying about laying her son because “Good sex can counterbalance a lot of other shit”; and Chrys (Adam Dlugolecki), a skimpy-Speedo-clad twink who sums up his time as Jocasta’s father’s 13-year-old pupil with the words, “He fucked me a lot.”

 A single gifted playwright might have made something of all this. (Then again, Donald Jolly was only marginally more successful at updating the legend of Zeus and Ganymede in Playwrights’ Arena’s recent Baby Eyes, though that play at least had the advantage of never being boring.)

What ifs aside, Breihan, Dlugolecki, and Noon do score timing points for their in-unison Fates, though what one is to make of lines like, “An open sore, a black lamb, no toilet seat cover,” only Jocasta: A Motherf**king Tragedy’s fifteen playwrights know for sure, and a scene involving three infant dolls being banged about take the play even farther into bizarre land.

 Dlugolecki is quite good, heartbreaking indeed, as the abused Chrys, Faugno manages to make something relatively believable of Oedipus, and both Breihan and Glann have their effective moments as Medea and Cassandra.

Not so fortunate are Kays’ one-note Jocasta (though it would probably take a Meryl Streep to make something of the muddled soliloquys she’s been given) and Noon’s equally flat (and even more foul-mouthed) Sphinx, though in her favor, the role would likely sink even the divine Miss Streep.

 What Jocasta: A Motherf**king Tragedy’s World Premiere does have going for it is scenic designer François-Pierre Couture’s stylishly modernistic take on a Greek bathing establishment, featuring more than a few secret hiding places from which director Weir has characters pop out in ever cleverer ways while wearing one after another of Vicki Conrad’s strikingly eclectic costume mix.

 Even more spectacular is Tony-nominated designer Cricket S. Myers’ blend of ingeniously distorted sounds and (Jakob Berger’s) original music that work in tandem with Brandon Baruch’s stunningly varied lighting effects.

Last but not least, Ronnie Clark has choreographed a particularly realistic fight scene.

Jocasta: A Motherf**king Tragedy is produced by Mark Seldis. Manichanh Kham is stage manager. Andrea Tinoco is assistant stage manager with additional scenic design by Kirk Wilson.

Theatergoers who go for the avant-garde may find more to go for in Jocasta: A Motherf**King Tragedy than this reviewer. Those who prefer less experimental fare are advised to go elsewhere.

The Broadwater Main Stage, 6322 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood.
www.ghostroad.org

–Steven Stanley
January 11, 2019
Photos: The Ghost Road Company

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, The Broadwater Mainstage, The Ghost Road Company