ART’s Show Will Go On

The future prosperity of Alternative Repertory Theatre could be on the line with its next production, John Patrick Shanley’s light sex comedy, “Psychopathia Sexualis.”

But the five actors assembled by ART’s artistic director, Patricia L. Terry, are not concerned with sudden-death pressure.

This is just acting, they say--nothing more nor less. It’s about artistry, not sentiment. And that is how Terry wants it.

“I’ve tried to shield them from all that,” she says--”all that” being ART’s financial crisis.

In February, Terry and producer Gary Christensen, the husband-and-wife team who founded the small theater company 13 years ago, put out an emergency appeal for donations and rearranged their schedule. They benched “Valley Song,” a serious drama by the acclaimed South African playwright Athol Fugard, and pinned their hopes of building a bigger audience on “Psychopathia Sexualis,” an amusing frolic by a writer best known for his Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1987 romantic comedy “Moonstruck.”

The appeal for donations has worked, bringing in $14,500 as of last weekend, Terry said Monday. That means ART will survive for at least one more season--a matter the theater’s leaders had said was in doubt before they took emergency measures. Although the donors’ support guarantees a five-play season in 2000-01, Terry said, ART’s longer-term prospects still depend on cultivating new fans.

And she is banking on “Psychopathia Sexualis” to start bringing them in.

ART’s problem has been flat attendance coupled with higher expenses in its home of the past 15 months, the Grand Central Art Center in the Artists Village of downtown Santa Ana.

At this point, a sports coach might try to rally a team with a pep talk about the stakes at hand, but Terry and the cast of “Psychopathia Sexualis” say that would never fly in the world of theater.

“It’s not our focus,” said Susan E. Taylor, who plays Lucille, the plucky heroine of the piece. “We’re artists and that’s business. . . . Not that our friends haven’t asked us what it’s like trying to save ART.”

Any such reminders come from without; actress Anna Maria Montoya, who lives in West Hollywood, said the crisis was “news to me” when an interviewer brought it up during a recent chat with Terry and the cast, who were gathered on stage at the 82-seat theater.

“I hate to see that responsibility [for saving the theater] go to the artist,” Montoya said. “It has to go to the community.”

Indeed, the “Psychopathia” cast members say actors are a largely unsentimental bunch when it comes to questions of survival. Their artistic survival is always an issue as they audition, scrounge and hunger for their next part.

“We’re so temporarily employed that, as much as you may love a particular theater and have loyalty to it, it’s ‘so long,’ ” said Todd Fuessel, who plays Dr. Block, the Machiavellian psychiatrist who sets the play’s action in motion. Fuessel is the only cast member who previously has acted for ART; Terry said there was no avalanche of company veterans descending on the auditions hoping to do or die for dear old ART--although the theater’s extended family has been helpful with donations and volunteering to do chores around the theater.

Terry is cautiously optimistic that “Psychopathia” will pay off: “It’s fun, provocative, sexy, comedic. It’s got everything going for it that should make it a tremendous success. But who knows?”

Perhaps it is fitting that a theater that was hanging by a thread is staking its hopes on a play about a man who literally has to grasp at threads.

Arthur, played by Zack DuRant, is a young painter with a problem: he is impotent unless he can see and touch his particular fetish--a pair of his father’s old argyle socks. What’s more, his wedding date is approaching (Lucille doesn’t know about the sexual hitch), and Dr. Block, in a tough-love attempt at a cure, has confiscated the socks.

Arthur enlists Howard, something of an amateur psychologist, to retrieve the socks from Block. But Howard, played by John Bolen, is reduced to simpering putty after a session of mind-games with the astute shrink. Howard’s wife, Ellie (played by Montoya) and Lucille must ride to the rescue in Act 2.

Bolen and DuRant say they hopped on the Internet to research Freud, Jung and the original “Psychopathia Sexualis,” an 1886 treatise on sexual disorders by a German baron, Richard Krafft-Ebing.

But ultimately, Bolen said, the play depends on the actors being funny, not their mastery of the psychology of sexual aberrance.

The play could lead to some after-theater discussion about the relative effectualness of men (who come up big zeros, except perhaps for the cagey Block) and women (who save the day).

Still, said Taylor, “I wouldn’t put too much weight on it. It’s a light sex comedy [in which] love conquers all.”

Bolen admits to one commercial concern about the production: that the title might scare audiences away from a play that has neither psychopaths nor sex scenes. Some phallic totems adorning Block’s office, and a Rorshach-like painting that certain minds might construe in a certain way, are the only sexually suggestive elements in the play.

“It’s PG-13,” Bolen began, “but the title makes it sound . . . “

“Triple X!” yelled Fuessel.

“I’d bring my 12-year-old daughter,” Bolen concluded.

As for those kinky socks, Terry said they come from the wardrobe of the show’s lighting designer, Joe Holbrook. It was up to scenic designer S. Todd Muffatti to make sure the argyles looked as if they’d been through a lifetime of bedroom stress.

“He poured talcum on them, but that didn’t work,” Terry said. “He literally took them outside and rolled them in the dirt on Broadway. And then he ended up tearing them.”

A lot is riding on those socks. Argyles proved hard to find, Terry says, and ART has only that single pair to last through some 40 performances over a 12-week run.

“If we can do it,” said Taylor, “the socks can do it.”

“Psychopathia Sexualis,” by John Patrick Shanley, at Alternative Repertory Theatre, in the Grand Central Art Center, 125B N. Broadway, Santa Ana. Previews Thursday and Friday, 8 p.m.; opens Saturday. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. $22 to $25, $18 for previews. Ends June 24. (714) 836-7929.