Theatre in Review: Pretty Filthy (The Civilians/Abrons Art Center)

	Steve Rosen, Marrick Smith (red), Jared Zirelli (yellow), John Behlmann. Photo: Richard Termine

The intrepid members of The Civilians are once again practicing their own inimitable form of anthropology. Having reported on life in the ultra-Christian city of Colorado Springs, explored the politics of gentrification in Brooklyn, and delved into the details of their own parents' divorces, they have filed a musical report on the pornographic film/video industry in California's San Fernando Valley. The title is Pretty Filthy; in truth, it isn't filthy at all -- just a bit graphic -- but, at its best, it is funny and illuminating, a musical comedy of manners focusing on those who toil in the world's most salacious industry.

Following their usual practice, the Civilians descended on the Valley and interviewed everyone they could, an approach that yields a bumper crop of nuttily distinctive personalities, all of whom are vividly realized in Bess Wohl's script. There's the agent Sam Spiegel, who rides herd on his highly strung clientele, whom he calls blondies. ("They call me Jew Hefner/'Cause I'm just like their mother/Only Jewish and a man.") There's Carrie, who directed political documentaries in El Salvador until the day she saw an incompetently made sex video and decided she could do better. And there's Fredo, an Italian ladies' man, whose skill at manually finding his partners' G-spots generates its own, admittedly short-lived, video genre. In a show loaded with entrepreneurial personalities, none is more resourceful than Kayden Kross, who chose her nom de porn for the possible titles it could generate: "Don't Kross the Nurse, Don't Kross the Teacher, Don't Kross My Mom -- when you have a good brand, the possibilities are endless."

Providing the evening's through line are two stars, one rising and one falling. Becky is a pert blonde from Iowa who, noticing that her friends are all making $7.20 an hour as waitresses, opts for porn stardom, renaming herself Taylor St. Ives and bringing along her boyfriend, Bobby, for the ride. Georgina Congress is a three-decade veteran who recalls the glory days of red-carpet stardom and awards shows, but who happily admits that the current rage for MILF scenarios has given her career a new lease on life.

If you're looking for seamy scenarios out of an old Jacqueline Susann novel, filled with innocent young people spiraling down into a haze of drugs and illness, you've come to the wrong place. The characters on both sides of the camera in Pretty Filthy are perky, candid, and, for the most part, feel totally in control of their careers. Their greatest fear is being "shot out," so overexposed that they are no longer in demand. The trick is to keep reinventing yourself -- cosmetically and, if necessary, surgically -- for an audience forever in search of novelty. Another agent, Shy Love, counseling one of her clients, describes her many tricks for dragging out a performer's career: "So I said, 'You're brunette/small boobs; then you're blonde, small boobs; then we go blonde, big boobs. Then I'll convert you to brunette, big boobs, and everybody will reshoot you again. And then when you're done with blonde and brunette big boobs, than we add anal."

Is this any way to make a living? Yes and no. The mostly young, mostly frisky stars swear that they enjoy the work and the fast money, but it becomes clear that the clock is ticking in more ways than one. Not only is there the fear of being shot out, but technology has rewritten the industry's rules. In Georgina's youth, when films were released on VHS, the budgets were bigger and so was the payoff. With the advent of streaming video, notes Tom, a disgruntled DVD distributor, "We're sitting on four thousand pieces of each title, and we end up having to blow them out at a dollar apiece." Georgina, taking control of the means of production like a Marxist, buys a big house and moves in a bunch of her colleagues; they shoot films there when not having sex with each other. But even this inventive approach doesn't last. Near the end, Becky ends up living in an apartment with a 24-hour camera setup, allowing potential clients to watch her go through her daily routines for free; if they want something more intimate, they can log on with their credit cards. Becky protests that she is still living the dream, but she is practically a prisoner in her own home, another citizen of what Sam Spiegel calls "the Playpen of the Damned."

Becky isn't the only one who finds out that the porn industry, once entered, is almost impossible to leave. As Jimmy, another performer notes, "I think about other things I can do and everything is porn. It's like, Okay, I can direct porn, I can shoot porn, I can do... It's all porn." Georgina, recalling a disastrous audition for The Karate Kid, Part II, which proved to be an invitation to the casting couch, points out that transitioning to the legit entertainment industry isn't really an option. And then there is the social stigma. Georgina admits to having switched her son's school three times, because people keep finding out what she does for a living. Bobby, Becky's boyfriend, recalls the mortifying moment when, talking to his mother on the phone, she rang off, calling him Dick Everhard, as he is known on screen. Bobby, by the way, gets dumped by Becky and drifts into a "gay-for-pay" career, tripling his income by doing men-only videos even though he is heterosexual. Among the many fascinating nuggets of information learned in Pretty Filthy is the fact that most straight performers in gay films prefer to take the passive role, because they don't have to maintain an erection.

The action is frequently punctuated by songs in which Michael Friedman's skillful use of pop hooks is flexibly adapted to Wohl's chatty, run-on lyrics. The standout numbers include "Names," in which the entire case peruses the lexicon of porn stage aliases ("Stormy Misty Sunny/Ginger Lynn Lacey Lane"); "Squirting 101," in which Fredo describes his G-spot career; and "Waiting for Wood," which describes the woes of being a man in an industry that is really all about the women. ("And I'm really just a prop/From my belly button to my knees/Everything else is pretty much/Just a life support system for my penis.")

Under Steve Cosson's direction, this is the slickest Civilians product yet, with a nimble cast inhabiting their multiple roles with the ease of master sketch artists. I particularly liked Alyse Alan Louis as the ever-game Becky; Luba Mason, bringing a welcome note of gravitas to the proceedings as Georgina; Steve Rosen as Sam Spiegel, condemning America as a nation of hypocrites who condemn porn as avidly as they consume it; and Marrick Smith as Bobby, who finds that real sexual excitement comes from being in front of a camera.

This is also the most elaborately designed Civilians production so far. Neil Patel's set features an upstage wall of unfinished wood on which is tattooed a view of the Hollywood sign from the rear. The wall is really a collection of doors, which allows for rapid entrances and exits. Justin Townsend's lighting creates some eye-grabbing wipes across the wall. Darrel Maloney's wickedly amusing projections range from close-ups of Sam Spiegel's cheesy business cards to the online view of Becky in her digital domain and on posters for such deathless epics as Hung Jury to a witty parade of porn star names in the opening number. Emily Rebholz's costumes are endlessly helpful for actors who are cast in multiple roles. Ken Travis' sound design preserves a thoroughly natural feel, no easy task given the difficult acoustics of the Abrons Art Center.

Pretty Filthy isn't the best Civilians show, if for no other reason than the fact that the people inhabiting it are pretty one-dimensional compared to the spiritual seekers of This Beautiful City or the political players of In the Footprint. But this is still a memorable visit to a subculture to which few of us would otherwise have entrée. And despite Sam Spiegel's assertion that many of his clients are graduate students or are funding business startups, the comment from him that sticks is this: "Really, most of these girls, they just need to be hugged. If you got to hug a blondie, you will find them hugging you with an unparalleled need to be held."--David Barbour