Whether you like them or not, the Amoralists’ gritty shows are like no other — thanks mostly to resident playwright Derek Ahonen’s distinctive mix of hyper-realism and satire, brash violence and unexpected tenderness.
He also has a flair for left-field asides and surreal non sequiturs. “You’ve a mouth like lavender,” is a gruff detective’s idea of a compliment in Ahonen’s latest pulp fiction, “The Bad and the Better,” which just opened off-Broadway.
The show’s tortured hero is Venus (David Nash), the kind of romantic who says blankly, “I loved her more than I can express. And I can express a lot.”
This lanky, ponytailed writer scored a downtown hit with “a pathetic play about anarchists” titled “The Sad Singers on Stanton Street” — a joke about Ahonen’s own breakthrough show, “The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side.”
This modest fame gives Venus — real name: Chucky — license to hang out with a cartoonish radical group trying to figure out the best way to topple America.
This is only the beginning of Ahonen’s convoluted story, which branches out into political corruption, undercover agents, vendettas and something or other about environmental accidents — it’s hard to tell.
By the time the body count nears double digits, you’ve stopped trying to make sense of the implausible twists and crazy revelations.
Which brings up something else you can say about Amoralists’ shows: They often struggle to gel. The plots can be incoherent, and the acting ranges from fearlessly intense to amateurish.
Director Daniel Aukin, who helmed Lincoln Center’s lovely “4000 Miles,” can handle the play’s multiple locations, but he has a tougher time wrangling his cast.
Sarah Lemp, the troupe’s brightest star, is terrific as a lovelorn secretary, and newcomer Cassandra Paras has a tough sexiness as the owner of a cop bar.
But too many performances underwhelm. Nash is a wimpy void as Venus/Chucky. Nick Lawson is impressively rubber-limbed, but speaks at lightning speed for no reason.
This doesn’t serve the writing.
As a politician named Eugene Moretti, David Lanson gets some of the show’s best lines. “I’m the Ben and Jerry’s that’s been sitting in the back of a freezer for two years,” Moretti declares. “Hard like a rock.”
Too bad the actor’s speech is so slurred that his flamboyant speeches fall flat.
Boasting flashes of nutty brilliance, “The Bad and the Better” is an ambitious show that strives for hard-boiled and settles for scrambled.