Playwright: Randall Colburn. At: Right Brain Project at the Rorschach Studio, 4001 N. Ravenswood. Phone: 773-750-2033; $15. Runs through: Aug. 14
It's a story as pitiful as it is commonplace: Two childhood comrades flee their small-town home in the California desert to the big city of Los Angeles, where circumstances eventually lead them to the seedy fringe industry of DIY porn. But Jessica, now self-christened Claudia, has left all that behind, returning to the barren regions on the edge of the Mojave, where she is now engaged to her church's youth leader, himself a 30-year-old virgin who responds eagerly to his fiancée's professions of born-again innocence. But then her abandoned comrade arrives, likewise seeking to make a new start. Ian's redemption, however, is more problematic, his past not as easily relinquishedin particular, the creditors he must elude. As his former lover's wedding approaches, and the emotional tensions escalate, their newfound security is increasingly threatened, until a sacrifice becomes inevitable.
Well, did Jessica/Claudia rat out her best friend to save herself? Or did Ian turn himself in as the next step toward his reformation? Are the two men who drive away with Ian on the wedding day mob enforcers or federal agents? Will the sheltered Trevor's faith allay whatever suspicions he may someday develop regarding his wife's motives in marrying him? What could have emerged a noiresque tale of feminine deceit in Randall Colburn's hands instead explores the fragile boundaries between the sacred and profane with religion presented, on the one hand, as a sanctuary in a cruel world and, on the other, as an obstacle to spiritual growth.
Colburn's narrative, as staged by the Right Brain Project in its fourth-floor warehouse studio, is structured in screenplay-styled three-characters-or-fewer scenes performed on the forestage, with absent personnel ranged on chairs against the upstage wall and acting-exercise wooden-block scenery. The building's echo-producing exposed brick shell, coupled with the operating noise of the room-sized air-conditioning unit, tend to blur the enunciation of actors speaking at conversational volume. And, in the role of the ambivalent penitent, Natalie DeCristofano's babyish clothing and appearance verge precariously close to pulp-fiction parody. But Colburn's is a mature drama asking serious questions, refusing to take sides or traffic in easy answers, and under Nathan Robbel's direction, the cast's wholesale commitment to their material are enough to overcome any impediments generated by the production's physical limitations.