Satire Drifts Into Formless Drama in ‘Hard Hat Area’

Leon Martell knows from droll. A founding member of Duck’s Breath Mystery Theatre, Martell specializes in nonlinear satire, typically of the whimsical order. Unfortunately, in “Hard Hat Area” at Theatre of Note, Martell’s stream-of-consciousness musings too often play like the first draft of a writing student who, anxious to complete an assignment in alternative theater, hurriedly jots whatever comes to mind, regardless of the overall structure and intent.

Hank (Thomas Prisco), a repressed nuclear physicist chafing in his constricting marriage to Kathy (Denise Krueger), longs to break out of his soulless grind and do something magnificently outrageous. Morally sickened by his own global death peddling, Hank longs for an act of more specific and personal destruction. When he is sent to consult on the construction of a Latin American nuclear reactor, he forms a dangerous new friendship with Al (Robert Stoccardo), a gangster who wants to make a deal with Hank--a vial of plutonium in exchange for the realization of Hank’s most violent fantasies.

Director Steve Morgan Haskell smartly paces his capable cast, although he makes some curious choices, such as showcasing Krueger’s gymnastic talents with no apparent motivation other than proving she can do a pretty terrific cartwheel. Prisco plays Hank with unvarying cartoonish-ness that eventually wears thin. As Hank’s lesbian temporary worker, Nancy Katerra is nicely dry and impeccably controlled.

Martell is too savvy a hand not to maximize what laughs arise from his mental meanderings, and his oddly formless drama occasionally flashes with genuine intellectual acuity. But “Hard Hat Area” isn’t consistently funny enough--or bitter enough--to do justice to its funny, bitter subject.

* “Hard Hat Area,” Theatre of Note, 1517 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends March 30. $10-$12. (213) 856-8611. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.