‘Art Star’ Falls on Its Own Fancy

A young performance artist brainstorms material for her next show in her rundown apartment. She fancies herself an up-and-comer on the L.A. art scene, but in reality she’s a no-talent poseur whose countercultural machinations mask incipient madness.

Oh, well. Sometimes people have to suffer for art. Not excepting theater critics. Jade Gordon’s one-woman show “Art Star” at Playwrights’ Arena may well occasion a state of acute suffering among those who elect--or are forced by circumstances--to attend.

No doubt Gordon and her director and co-writer, Tulsa Kinney, intended to infuse the show with a degree of high camp, but far from being a sendup of the famously self-indulgent performance art scene, their collaboration degenerates into a confused rant on infidelity, murder and insanity. The high point of the play comes when Gordon attempts to wedge a soup can up a nether orifice--the same source of inspiration, one suspects, for this entire enterprise.

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* “Art Star,” Playwrights’ Arena, 5262 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Feb. 21. $12, or two for $20. (213) 344-1910. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.