Pardon My Invasion is something like a bumper-car ride, always sending you careening in unpredictable directions. But these collisions aren't always of amusement-park playfulness, as whimsy is continually upended by jolts that threaten injury before pulling back from the brink with a disarming twist.
Brisk Weather Productions is currently presenting Joy Cutler's hard-to-categorize play at the Phoenix Theatre, and this is a high-end affair in the tiny downtown venue. An elevator ride up six floors takes you to the theater, which is when you'd be wise to fasten your seatbelts.
In barest terms, the story involves a teenage girl whose body becomes possessed by an AWOL soldier from the Iraq War. The setup suggests broad comedy, as the girl's mother struggles at the typewriter to churn out a new volume in her pulp-detective series, and there are solid laughs as Rita reads aloud her pseudo-Sam Spade prose. And the tone remains humorous as 13-year-old Penny tries to wrest her distracted mother's attention with complaints of strange new feelings in her body. Her mother's suggestion is a trip to the museum to look at Georgia O'Keeffe paintings to help Penny cope with what Rita blithely assumes are coming-of-age issues.
What follows puts to the test "suspension of disbelief" theatrical requirements. In fact, it's best just to forget about any of that, because once you're ready to go with the flow of the possessed-by-a-soldier scenario, the comfy living-room set (handsomely design by Fred Sharkey) has a few more invasions in store for you. There's the hyper-macho commanding officer who periodically materializes to harangue the private hiding in the girl's body, but even more audacious are the appearances by the fictional heroine Honey Babe from Rita's novels, who asserts herself both over the plots she's been stuck with and the specific plot of the moment of freeing Penny from the soldier's control.
This complicated scenario has been adeptly staged by director-producer Joe Weatherby, and he has guided his actors to confident performances in challenging roles. Sondra Putnam is beguilingly bewildered as the mother of a possessed teenager, and Marissa Keltie does admirable double-duty as adolescent Penny and the none-too-genteel grunt who inhabits her. John Flanagan creates a scarily brutish sergeant, Randy J. Blair is suitably gawky as Penny's almost-boyfriend, and Juliet Tanner has assuring strength as a police officer who ultimately unravels the mystery. And then there's Marie Shell as Honey Babe, her sequined dress barely containing pendulous breasts that should be licensed as deadly weapons, in a tour de force performance that commands utter attention whenever she is on stage.
Cutler invokes incest and pedophilia, compares battlefield blood with menstrual blood, and often has her characters let forth with jaw-dropping dialogue. "You're a sweet single mom with a Velcro twat," Honey Babe tells Rita in one of the tamer passages that unexpectedly erupt like land mines. One could easily accuse Cutler of gratuitous shock, especially as wartime atrocities are recounted, and of confused and confusing focus and tone. But it all contributes to a compelling weirdness that is impossible to anticipate.
Pardon My Invasion will run at the Phoenix Theatre through Feb. 8. Tickets are $15-$30. Call (800) 838-3006 or go to phoenixtheatresf.org.