"Klub," by Tim Robbins's Actor's Gang

Hollywood, Calfornia.  As you settle in and wait for the lights to go down, a bored clown greets you and warns you that from this theater, there is no exit. Okay. If you know Sartre’s No Exit or Albee’s Sandbox, where Mommy brings her mother home to live and sets her down under the sink with her food dish and her own blanket, maybe you’re clued in to what you are about to experience.

If not, prepare yourself for an existential roller coaster ride, and once you’re strapped in and the motor starts, there is no getting off.

Where the ride takes you is to the Klub, which is actor’s hell. You may not have made it, and you begin to suspect you will never make it, but you’ve struck a pact with the creative devil and you will be auditioning here for eternity.

What acts? A huge-breasted blond who will do anything to please the producer, including bringing her own electric drill and bloodily reorganizing her nose and boobs. A disgusting half-human creature who coats his intestines with oil, ingesting disgusting stuff and puking into a jar. Little Orphan Annie in her red wig and cutesy moves. Her mother lives in a wooden box (and has a few creative moves of her own). An aging juvenile lead who sees himself Shakespearean, but when the light is on him…where’s the iambic pentameter? A vaudeville act, stolen from a couple of guys in Laughlin, Nevada. More delicious if you know Laughlin–destination for senior citizen bus tours…

…All weirdly odd, but not so weird because you recognize them all. What? Not the animal who swallows poison and vomits? No? Try an ’80s cult classic, Forbidden Zone, and the Kipper Kids who wear too brief briefs, grunt, and crack eggs and pour syrup over their heads.

The delight of good absurd theater: although it seems a shapeless, formless romp of delightful mad bits, at the end, when you rise dizzily from your seat, the gestalt is as clear as if you’ve just watched classic Greek drama. Just satisfying.

This is tour-de-force madness. Actor’s Gang (Tim Robbins, artistic director) is first-rate, top hat, and if the clown loses his accent a couple of times, is that planned or accidental? If the timing is off, how can you ever know?

The program quotes Charlie Chaplin: “I hate the theater. I also hate the sight of blood, but it’s in my veins.”

Klub is wild good theater fun. Wish it hadn’t gone by so fast…or been quite so loud without modulation…I wanted to hold on to my favorite bits.

Klub - The Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Boulevard, Culver City, California – (310) 838-4264

Photography by Jean-Louis Darville