Review: Spike's
Limelight Playhouse, 10634 Magnolia Blvd., N. Hollywood, 213-466-1767
by Jeff Nelson
In Towards a Poor Theatre, Jerzy Grotowski writes, “If the actor, by setting himself a challenge publicly challenges others, and through excess, profanation and outrageous sacrilege reveals himself by casting off his everyday mask, he makes it possible for the spectator to undertake a similar process of self-penetration. If he does not exhibit his body, but annihilates it, burns it, frees it from every resistance to any psychic impulses, then he does not sell his body but sacrifices it. He repeats the atonement; he is close to holiness.”
Spike’s, a new work by Jeff Koch, seems saturated with this spirit, and if the play is not quite an outrageous sacrilege, it is at least profane. The actors in this play sacrifice themselves to the darker tendencies of human behavior—abuse, self-destruction, brutality—and ultimately atone themselves of their excesses by exposing the audience to the moral dilemmas of life on the dark side.
Set in a sleazy, low-life bar next to a strip joint, Spike’s is the story of Miss Brenda (Collene Frashure), a stripper, and the three men in her life who need her: Mickey (Jeff Koch), her controlling, abusive manager; Spike (Cosmo Canale), the bar owner who watches her destruction from afar; and Rick (John Ciccolini), a bored little rich boy with mob connections who discovers too late the price of his actions. These are “dark days” at Spike’s place, and the violence, crudeness, and despair of these characters make for a modern tragedy in the fullest sense of the word.
Frashure plays Miss Brenda as if she were a candle about to be extinguished, flickering feebly in the stormy night of her desolation. If Miss Brenda is something of a fallen angel, then Koch’s Mickey is the Mephistopheles who has tripped her up. Koch renders a fascinating portrait of a man who knows full well his terrible capacity for evil, yet, fascinated, moves toward its fullest manifestation. John Ciccolini is well cast as Mickey’s eager disciple, and convincingly struggles with his confused ideas of masculinity, violence, and love. Cosmo Canale is fine as a bartender who has seen too much, but lacks the strength to find another way.
Jake Cofone directs this fable with conviction and purpose, and in the end the moral is clear: Just say no. Steeped in raw language and set in a grindingly inhumane world, Spike’s allows the spectator to vicariously descend into immorality. The lesson of this trip to hell, however, is a conventional one, and therein lies Spike’s great weakness. The morality of this play turns out to be Bible-belt, after all, despite its heavy coating of “sophistication.” Nevertheless, Spike’s is a credible picture of how far one can fall into the abyss, and is told with poetry and insight by a first-rate cast. Lighting design is provided by Steve Epstein. ♦