THEATER REVIEW : Barrage of Lingo Aims at Religious Right

Jesse Helms may have given Mac Wellman trouble, but he also gave him great material. The playwright was one of the objects of the Republican senator’s wrath during the height of the National Endowment for the Arts wars, but as his “7 Blowjobs”--currently in a sharp production at the Wooden-O Theatre--shows, it’s the artist who’s having the last word.

And what a slick, tricky, funny, barrage of lingo it is. This one-act satire is a biting indictment of the religious right and its cronies. But it’s also a satiric blast from one of the contemporary stage’s premier masters of syntactical scat.

Wellman is a word-meister--like Tom Stoppard, Len Jenkin and a handful of others--who isn’t afraid to chuck the rules of realism when the time’s ripe. He delights in grammatical tape-loops, comic codas and mantras, making his characters speak an abstract tongue that says as much about the devaluation of language as it does about the ostensible subject of arts censorship and anti-intellectual symbol mongering.

The play kicks off with delightfully ditsy Dot (a standout comedic performance by Bonita Friedericy) answering the phone. “Senator X’s office,” she chirps. “Yesnomaybe. Nothing of value inside. Please don’t steal our stuff.”

Her nonsense banter sets the tone for the series of verbal volleys that is to follow. The office is thrown into a tailspin when a package of seven “obscene” photos arrives. The senator’s aides, the senator himself, Reverend Tom and a few others try to make heads or tails of the heads and tails in the offending images.

Lesser actors might be tripped up by director James Martin’s rapid-fire pacing, but not these pros. Christine Dunford is uptight Eileen, the Ivy League blond who’s so repressed she twitches. Mitchell Gossett, her fellow senatorial gofer Bruce, is wound just as tightly. “Did the puttytat from Puskaloosa poop his pants?” she asks him, “Putz.” “I think that you are a liberal underneath your underwear,” he tells her.

The reliable John Nesci has got fake conservative gravitas down pat, and Alan Brooks’ Reverend Tom is aptly smarmy, if a bit underplayed. Gossett also returns as the senator’s closet-case son, BobBob Jr.

Like Wellman’s previous “Sincerity Forever,” “7 Blowjobs” is dedicated, in the playwright’s words, “to those supreme clowns of our sad time, Jesse Helms and Donald Wildmon” and others. Southern California has seen this play in a workshop at the Taper, Too, and in a full production by San Diego’s Sledgehammer Theater. But this thoroughly professional staging merits a repeat viewing, not to mention a visit from anyone who’s never encountered the work of this singular literary talent.

*”7 Blowjobs,” Wooden-O Theatre, 2207 Federal Ave., West L.A., Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends June 12. $10. (310) 477-2199. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.