I'm not easily shocked at the theater. When you see 50 to 75 productions a year, it takes a special show to you leave you speechless. Steve Yockey's Octopus at Island City Stage is that show.
Not even 15 minutes pass, and the audience is already eavesdropping on an all-male, full-frontal foursome, the result of two couples who should probably be in therapy but instead decide to be in each other.
And yet the initial shock at seeing everything — which makes a faux-risqué musical like The Full Monty look like a benign comedy for the ladies' luncheon set — wears off as quickly as it arrives. That's because the uninhibited actors are comfortable with it themselves and because it's an unexpectedly beautiful scene, staged like an erotic ballet of rotating configurations, the eight arms of the men beginning to give you some idea of the title's symbolism.
Island City Stage is playing up this salacious element of the show in its marketing materials, as well it should — any critic who doesn't begin his review with it is burying the lead. But this scene is the mere opening salvo to an exhilarating hour and a half of bracing, demanding, surrealist theater that owes a debt to Eugene Ionesco. Director Andy Rogow and his cast and crew have delivered an unforgettable marvel on every level.
Most of Octopus takes place in the weeks following an ill-fated orgy. Kevin (Chris Mitchell), who organized the rendezvous, has come to regret it; even during the act, he eventually sat on the sidelines. His boyfriend, Blake (Craig Moody), who was uncertain of the foursome at first, eventually embraced it, leaving Kevin bitter and jealous in the aftermath.
Their companions have had it worse: Max (Juan Gamero) is a wreck, complaining of a house with an unfixable water leak and a lover, Andy (Christopher Kaufmann), who has not only tested positive for HIV but has left the relationship for — and this is where shit gets really weird — the desperate confines of the ocean floor. But at least he's been kind enough to inform his friends about his aquatic whereabouts through a most unusual courier: an anachronistic telegram boy (Kristian Bikic) who appears, soaking wet and clutching Andy's missives, at their doors.
Without spoiling the play's bold dramatic conceit, suffice it to say that things get physical and very, very wet — those sitting in the front row should arrive prepared. Octopus is gestalt theater at its finest and most unpredictable, blessed with five courageous actors willing to bare all, shed tears, slip and fall, and get back up.
Bikic, who wields telegrams like the scythe of death, is the best of all, a compellingly otherworldly presence and a master of the plastic, tacked-on smile. Moody delivers a gut-wrenching Blake; Kaufmann a melancholy Andy; Gamero a convincingly tortured, grieving Max; and Mitchell a touching and exploratory Kevin, who discovers dark truths and profound insights before our eyes.
Michael McClain's set, lovely and economic, imagines a "place above and below the ocean surface," guided every step of the way by Preston Bircher's masterfully atmospheric lighting, Andy Fiacco's suggestive video projections and David Hart's sound design, from the ambient noise of a coffee shop to the mysterious, bowel-churning rumbles from an unfriendly ocean dweller.
All of this is vitally important, but it wouldn't work if the underlying messages of Yockey's script didn't resonate. Rest assured, beneath all the bells, whistles, pools, leaks, and penises, Octopus is a sobering cautionary tale about the choices in love and sex that are damaging and unhealthy — emotionally, physically, and metaphysically.
Octopus. Through March 1 at Island City Stage at Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale. Tickets cost $30. Call 954-519-2533, islandcitystage.org.
