You can get dizzy trying to keep track of the comings and goings in “Escape,” Susan Mosakowski’s comedy about three troubled couples. Performed in separate, distinct areas of the tiny La MaMa stage, each representing an apartment, it’s like an intricate, downtown theater version of “Desperate Housewives.”
The first pair we meet are Harry Houdini III (Carlo Alban) and his wife, Bess (Samantha Soule). Harry, who longs to follow in his famous grandfather’s footsteps, hopes to audition for the Ringling Brothers circus, but can’t extricate himself from anything. It’s up to Bess to pay the bills with her job at an S&M club.
In the adjoining apartment is Marilyn (Lauren Fortgang), an actress taken prisoner by a self-styled terrorist (John Sharian) whose accent keeps changing.
When he’s not watching action movies — “I like Hans Gruber. I want to look like him,” he says of the villain from “Die Hard” — he tries to figure out what Marilyn’s life is worth based on actuarial tables.
Finally, there’s unemployed elevator repairman Gus (Ted Schneider) and his wife, Lily (Susan Louise O’Connor), whose desperate financial straits have prompted an increasingly paranoid Gus to arm himself with automatic weapons.
The characters’ fates become entangled when Harry’s neighbors find the straitjacket and coffin that he’s thrown out in fits of disgust.
This daffy absurdist comedy has its moments, especially when the hapless Harry is rescued time and again by his patient wife. Gaye Taylor Upchurch’s clever staging keeps the complicated action flowing smoothly, and the ensemble delivers expert comic turns. But the three story lines in “Escape” don’t add up to a compelling whole.