Review: Love of Last Resort

Jerry Rabushka’s show is more a comedy/drama with songs than a traditional musical. Created by Rabushka’s St. Louis-based theater, Ragged Blade Production, Love of Last Resort brings together Mr. Disappointed and Mr. Lonesome on an abandoned gay resort island in for an extended courtship that makes Cyrano de Bergerac’s fervent campaign for Rosalinda’s hand seem like lollygagging.

The show has a kindly, concerned heart that glimmers attractively from within a conventional and predictable play. (Rabushka is resident playwright and artistic director of Ragged Blade, which aims its material basically to gay, lesbian and transgendered audiences.) For the Fringe, Last Resort is presented at Below Zero Lounge.

Josh (Zach Jett) has been stuck alone at White Dove Cove for three years. But he has made the best of things. He takes cues from Martha Stewart Living Magazine on how to make what he needs to survive. But Martha would never approve of the ratty set that serves as the interior of Josh’s hut, supposedly inspired by her magazine. Gosh, Josh doesn’t even make his bed to keep things prim and tidy the way Martha would have it.

To entertain himself Josh takes on a variety of personalities and puts on television shows for himself starring his various selves. Unfortunately, none of this turns out to be hilarious enough to evoke one decent guffaw from the audience of 18 men on Friday night.

Into this self-sufficient but sexually starved paradise washes up the melancholy Matt (Tim Keough). Mourning the dissolution of his failed gay relationship, to escape all the bed-hopping on a sex-obsessed gay cruise ship, he cast himself adrift. In a cogent observation of the insensitivity of his fellow passengers, Matt says, in the best line of the play, that his leave-taking was “seen by everyone and noticed by no one.”

As soon as Josh revives Matt, he launches one campaign after another to seduce him into loving him — or at least to having sex with him. This includes casting Matt as a porn star in a fantasy show and another instance of some role-playing in which Josh encourages Matt to play out his failed relationship to heal himself. Matt’s decision to engage in the review of his life only makes him vulnerable to another of Josh’s forays into attempted seduction.

Jett establishes some sexual tension in the energy he brings to Josh’s non-stop panting for Matt. While there is some closed-mouth kissing, there are no graphic sexual scenes. Keough does make Matt’s depression quite pronounced with his sullen attitude, glances of distrust and stiff body language expressed whenever Josh’s advances become too invasive. But these engaged performances do not trump what is a commonplace play.
While Rabushka labors to make sincere points about the importance of individuality, the power of acceptance and recovering trust after undergoing traumatic experiences, the play over-extends what might have been a perfectly effective 30-minute character study into a 90-minute trial of patience.

It’s not giving too much away to say that, as in most two-character shows, there’s the convention of turning the besieged, oppressed character — Matt in this case — into the dominant player. In what is supposed to be the big dramatic moment, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise to learn that Josh is not just assuming various personalities merely to entertain himself. Right on schedule comes the inevitable revelation about Josh’s true, hidden self. Of course, only in theater does such instant therapy lead to an unconvincing fairy tale ending in which both Josh and Matt become a Prince Charming to one another.

— Jerry Stein