Ramiz Monsef’s horror play The Ants, now getting its World Premiere at the Geffen, has a gripping, suspenseful midsection. Its bizarre opening sequence and its even weirder, seemingly endless final scene are another matter.

The play gets off to a bewildering start when the conical six-foot-high pile of garbage that’s been sitting onstage from the moment the audience enters the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater turns out to have a human face and voice.

Are we meant to take this gobbledygook-spouting creature to be a schizophrenic street person whose verbal mumbo-jumbo might actually mean something in the context of what’s about to ensue?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Things do clear up considerably when Monsef gets down to the business of introducing his protagonists: 30something self-made multimillionaire Sean (Ryan Shrime), his high-power wife Meredith (Megan Hill), and Sean’s ne’er-do-well younger brother Nami (Nicky Boulos), who’s shown up on elder bro’s doorstep tonight in need of cash and a place to crash.

And what a house atop a hill he’s arrived at, a modern-day fortress armed with a security system so cutting edge, no would-be home invader could ever hope to even get near it, not with a “moat” designed to electrocute anyone who dares approach, let alone actually make it through its three-inch-thick steel-protected shell.

Indeed, all that Sean or Meredith need do to arm the security system is give a verbal command to The Brain, essentially a cerebrum-shaped Amazon Echo with such advanced technology, it knows instinctively when it’s been given instructions and not simply overhearing a conversation in the room.

And with homeless encampments at the foot of the hill growing more numerous and fractious on a daily basis, if ever there was a time for such state-of-the-art security, it’s now.

Still, impressed as Nami may be by this latest of his brother’s pricey possessions, all he needs at the moment is a safe haven for the night.

Sean proves more easily persuaded than Meredith, who’s had it up to here with her husband’s loser sibling, but blood ties prove stronger than marital ones when Sean, ignoring Meredith’s misgivings, gives Nami the okay..

Unfortunately for the famished Nami, Sean and Meredith keep a vegan home, and what their unwelcome visitor craves is meat, which is why despite his sister-in-law’s strenuous objections, he is eventually allowed to order a home-delivered pizza.

Enter The Pizza Guy (Jeremy Radin), though given what’s happening down below (dire events I’d best not reveal here), that’s more easily said than done with Meredith absolutely convinced he poses a threat to their lives.

The Ants has a lot going in its favor.

Monsef raises issues of national concern, most specifically the increasing number of unhoused Americans in a country where obscene wealth lives side-by-side with dire poverty, and the horror genre he’s opted for prevents his play from becoming too much of a polemic most of the way through, particularly with bits of humor sprinkled throughout.

In addition, the fact that Sean (born Shahid), and Nami grew up the offspring of Iranian immigrants, only one of whom embraces his multicultural identity, gives The Ants both specificity and representation.

The fiery performances elicited by director Pirronne Yousefzadeh, in particular those of Boulos, Hill, and Radin, are another plus.

So is Carolyn Mraz’s sleek living-room-and-kitchen set, Pablo Santiago’s dramatic lighting, John Nobori’s shock-inducing sound design and suspense-enhancing original music, Dominique Fawn Hill’s character-appropriate costumes, and above all Hana S. Kim’s downright spectacular projection design.

Unfortunately for audiences, The Ants overstays its welcome by about half-an-hour with a tacked-on two-character coda that just gets stranger and stranger as the minutes tick slowly by. (What on earth are we supposed to make of Meredith’s tattered red ball gown, and while we’re at it, how is it that the only weapon on hand in the house is a hammer?)

Hugo Armstrong voices The Brain. Susanna Jaramillo is assistant director. Dominik Krzanowski is magic consultant. Olivia O’connor is dramaturg. Darlene Miyakawa is production stage manager. Casting is by Phyllis Schuringa, CSA.

Minus its final scene, The Ants (which could just as easily have been titled Attack of the Have-Nots or Revolt of the Homeless) would be a nifty ninety-minute thriller with a doozy of a final blackout.

As is, it’s a play that doesn’t know how to begin and doesn’t know when to end.

Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood.
www.geffenplayhouse.com

–Steven Stanley
June 30, 2023
Photos: Aaron Epstein

Tags: Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles Theater Review, Ramiz Monsef