Through Looking Glass of ‘Burrhead’

Snake-handlers, talking birds, labyrinthine swamps--such is the surreal landscape of “Burrhead,� Deborah Pryor’s eerie dream play by the New One-Act Theatre Ensemble at Theater of NOTE.

Joby (Miranda Viscoli) is a backwoods Virginia innocent courted by a menacing but charismatic redneck named Orrin (Darrett Sanders). Following a hastily arranged wedding--attended by snake-handling worshipers and a basketful of sidewinders--a terrorized Joby runs away, meeting a host of bizarre characters in a nightmarish bog.

Like “Alice in Wonderland,� Pryor’s play uses a nonsensical journey to deliver a psychological allegory. But where Lewis Carroll made illogic enchanting, here it’s just willfully perverse. A deranged cracker (Stewart Skelton), his mom (Sarah Lilly) and a creepy twosome of look-alike narrators (Denise Poirier and Adrienne Stout) exist largely to add color to Pryor’s Southern Gothic fantasy rather than shed light on Joby’s character, which remains frustratingly opaque.

The production is more memorable than the play itself. Director Steve Morgan Haskell, using an oblong stage with the audience on either side, cooks up a series of dreamy visuals, including a weirdly transfixing solo from a bald, barefoot bride (Raige Pierson).

* “Burrhead,� Theater of NOTE, 1517 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends July 15. $12. (213) 856-8611. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.