the world of neil labute is not for the meek. The playwright/screenwriter made women irate with his “In The Company of Men,” and he made men squirm with “The Shape of Things.”
In LaBute’s play “Bash,” currently staged at Onstage Atlanta, he deals with an abrupt assault on a gay man.
A dark tale of how people inflict violence on others, “Bash” is divided into three stories. In the first, “Iphigenia in Orem,” a Utah businessman (Matt Hamner) tells a secret to a virtual stranger in a Las Vegas hotel room.
His infant child has just died. As the man continues to talk, we learn more about what led to the incident.
Hamner’s performance is decent, but he doesn’t offer much variety as an actor and doesn’t completely capture the nuances of a man whose life slowly unravels.
the next two segments of “bash” are much more polished. Barbara Cole Uterhardt stars in “Medea Redux,” which opens in a jail's interrogation room.
Uterhardt plays a young woman who, at age 13, had an inappropriate relationship with a junior high teacher. The teacher got her pregnant, and she had the baby.
Their reunion leads to tragedy for the young child.
Uterhardt directs more than she acts these days, but “Bash” is a reminder of how effective she can be. The character is sad and vindictive, with a deliberateness to her meeting with the father of her son.
“A Gaggle of Saints” is by far the most chilling segment of "Bash." It starts off innocently enough, even witty, as newlyweds John (John Markowski) and Sue (Julie Gibbs) recount how they met and became high school sweethearts.
While John and Sue are out in the park, John sees two gay men. He is repulsed. Much later that evening, he is out with male friends and he sees the two men again, ending what appears to be a date.
John follows one of the guys into the bathroom and pretends to want to pick him up. Then he and his friends viciously beat him up.
The performances in this are top-notch. Gibbs has an eternally sunny façade, always cheerful, never wanting disturbances. It’s left to the audience to see how much of John’s dark side she knows about — or has seen.
Markowski believably segues into his character's brutal, violent side. LaBute doesn’t fill in all the blanks here either; it’s left for us to determine what makes John so homophobic.
Onstage’s take is guttural theater. If you’ve never seen the play, it will make you talk — and wince a little.
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