Fluffy Fe

Jessica Hagedorn's new play Fe In The Desert is nothing like the author's first play, Stairway to Heaven. It's also quite unlike most of the productions I've seen at Intersection for the Arts under the auspices of Campo Santo.

As a friend of mine put it over dinner before last night's show, "Campo Santo basically does the same play over and over again." This is, to an extent true. In the past few years, I think I've seen only one Campo Santo production -- Octavio Solis' The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy -- which hasn't take itself extremely seriously and didn't involve tortured souls howling at the moon. The souls in Pancho and Lucy were tortured alright, but they made us howl with laughter.

While Stairway to Heaven fit firmly into the usual category of Campo Santo play, Fe is much lighter and more goofy. Hagedorn has rediscovered the sense of humor of her novels in this hard-edged comedy about a couple of ex-cons who hold-up a wealthy couple in their well-appointed desert home.

The play is breezy and insubstantial with little in the way of subtext or character development. But it's a lot of fun to watch, thanks to Danny Scheie's creative use of the space (which includes the incorporation of an upstairs balcony as an airport restaurant and plane cockpit) and some mesmerizing comic performances. As Fe, Margo Hall creates a loony cartoon portrait of a lady of leisure. She's balsy and endearing as well as spoiled and sad. Michael Torres brings swagger to his role as movie mogul Ramon. Danny Wolohan has the most difficult job of all the cast members. He is the only straight man in the play, Fe's loving but spineless husband Bill, and as such, has to swim the doggy paddle in the middle of a sea of careening free-stylers. True to form, he's brilliantly understated throughout and provides the important straight foil to the other characters' funny-man antics.

The play occupies very different terrain both literally and figuratively to Stairway to Heaven. It's set in the hot desert rather than in San Francisco. And it offers a vision of life as an absurd journey with ups and downs, rather than a pit of despair from whence death is the only escape.

As I watched the play, I couldn't help being reminded of oddball films like The Big Lebowski and Dog Day Afternoon. I think Fe would make a better indie movie than a stage drama at the end of the day. I think the jumping time-frame, the cookie characters, the desert setting and the plot-driven denouement would lend themselves particularly well to celluloid treatment. Hagedorn should seriously think about turning her script into a screenplay if she hasn't already.

Still, I think the play makes for a sweet way to spend an evening at the theatre. If nothing else, it's worth seeing to get a feel for the sweeter side of Campo Santo.