In his program notes, writer-director John Fisher says he hopes his latest play reflects the weirdness he feels living in Trump's America. Flim-Flam makes only a few cursory and/or gratuitous comic references to the President XLV, with the otherwise non-referential material apparently meant to somehow parallel the new world order. In my first public defense of our new president, I don't think you can pin the blame for Flim-Flam on Donald J. Trump. At best (or worst), he provides only a topical handle on which to drape the flimsy material woven in increasingly slapdash manner.
The Theatre Rhino production opens in the style of a mild-mannered comedy as two waiters in New York share their disheartening experiences trying to make it as actors. In a health-club locker room, the once-trendy director of increasingly obscure art-films miraculously appears, offering Aaron and Endin the chance to star in his latest low-budget epic. Despite warnings from a veteran actor, the auteur lures the younger actors to Iowa, where his credit cards don't seem to work, but he will most certainly reimburse the actors once everything is straightened out with the bank.
The setup is conventional enough, laced with some slightly off-the-wall humor that can spark laughs. The movie turns out to be artsy porn, with the younger of the recruited actors fed a horse variation of Viagra, which gives him an erection the size of a battleship. Here the play begins to devolve into absurdity, which is not the same thing as Theater of the Absurd, where philosophies are explored in manners that may be malleable, but as zaniness that may be a disguise for laziness. Perhaps the play wants to be, to pull from the catalog of trite blurbs, "a madcap romp," one with an edge, but that here is a dull knife indeed.
With the Iowa fiasco behind them, Aaron and Endin let the sage older actor convince them that there is big money to be made by bringing high-tone theater to the sticks. They settle into a California farm town, start a theater school, and put on a production of Shakespeare's Henry IV. In quick succession, a gangster demands protection money from the troupe but ends up playing King Henry, the porno director shows up unannounced, one of the actors is discovered to be making child porn with titles like Tots in Cum Shots, a couple of people get killed and their bodies eaten by actors dressed as buzzards, a Zika baby appears, and a running joke about Bundt cakes culminates in reports of their laxative effects.
As the struggling actors, Fisher and Daniel Chung pull occasional laughs from their predicaments, but there is steadier work from Donald Currie as the veteran actor, Kevin Copps as the pornmeister, and Jesse Vaughn as the gangster-turned-thespian. Krystle Piamonte plays a number of roles including the wind. Fisher's direction uses actors to provide various special and sound effects, some of which are clangorous and a few that are clever.
Aaron and Endin have a penchant for working showtune lyrics into their conversations, and that's fun, but other inside theater references can fall flat. "He's as dead as Edward Albee," says a character in one witless line. Flim-Flam should wish it were as alive as Edward Albee.
Flim-Flam will run at the Eureka Theatre through March 18. Tickets are $15-$40. Call (800) 838-3006 or go to therhino.org.