Matthew Modine Saves the Alpacas

I laughed through both acts…but at what? Was this Blair Singer comedy slapstick, camp, farce or just…who knows and who cares? Matthew Modine, recently lauded for his stage performance in To Kill a Mockingbird and his directorial skills in Twelve Angry Men with Wallace Shawn and F. Murray Abraham, plunges with delightful abandon into a Mel Brookish Marx Brothersish silly silly comedy about Matthew Modine, the actor, long out of public eye, who goes to a publicist for career renewal and is told that if he wants to get publicity, he needs a cause. All the good causes are taken. The publicist is the delightful Peri Gilpin of Frasier, her campily gay assistant played by French Stewart of Third Rock From the Sun. The cause they find is to save the dying alpacas, since the 7,000-year-old South American tribe who lives off alpacas will not survive without them. And in the second scene, indeed, you visit the tribe and find the alpacas on various hillocks, falling over, and the tribesmen waiting for the predicted return of a “prodigal son” who has three names. Well, Matthew Mo Dine has three names. You see what sort of world you’ve stumbled into?

Couldn’t be sillier, and if you give up trying to decide whether it’s satire (a bit broad) or whatever and just sit back, as I did, and join the audience laughter, and just enjoy as Blair pulls in every Hollywood shtick, you’re in for a fun evening. The publicist has been Botoxed and surgeried to the point where whenever she and Modine share a passionate kiss, she loses her dentures. (Please, Blair, everyone in Hollywood does implants.) And although she looks 35, she’s actually 83 and on the verge of death. (Blair, 83-year-old women in Hollywood don’t cave in — they take Pilates.) And the 7,000-year-old Indian tribe is waiting for its prodigal son, which is Old Testament. (Where did they get that book? Don’t ask.)  And when the real prodigal finally returns, his three names are Juan Juan Juan. Need I say more?

So you see what you’re in for. The play bounces off a bit of Play in the Fields of the Lord, where an American Indian goes really native and joins a primitive tribe, only to kill them off with his new-world bacteria. Matthew Modine brings in handi-wipes and sanitizes the tribe to near extinction. Of course, where real life and stage life coincide, the stage Matthew Modine actually becomes  involved with the welfare of the tribe, just as the true Matthew is totally involved and committed to green and environmental causes.

So don’t analyze — just have fun. You are entering Hollywood silly-silly land with Matthew Modine, and with him, you wait for the happy ending, as the last two alpacas — white, fluffy lady alpaca and her gentleman friend — finally…but it would be a spoiler to give that scene away.

Matthew Modine is remembered for great performances in Married to the Mob and Shortcuts. One role I particularly remember was in the remake of The Browning Version, where he plays the sympathetic American.

So leave serious behind. Help Matthew Modine save the alpacas and have a little fun.

Geffen Playhouse: 10886 LaConte Avenue, Westwood, California.