The rollerskating dream sequence is pretty kick-ass, though.

I had a peculiar sensation while watching Essential Self-Defense at Playwrights Horizons this weekend. With the start of every new scene, I could almost feel playwright Adam Rapp hurling an economy-size pot of spaghetti against a wall and watching it slide down the surface. Some interesting patterns, shapes, and flavors emerge from the muck from time to time, but mostly it's all about watching the waste accumulate in a big, savory pile on the floor.

All the ingredients in this show sound tasty - hard rock karaoke, punk librarians, mysterious abductions of middle schoolers, Paul Sparks... what could go wrong? Hidden beneath several layers of camp, pseudo-irony, and hedwig-like bizarreness, Essential Self-Defense is really a sweet love story about two socially paralyzed misfits. This story itself should be charming - Paul Sparks and Heather Goldenhersh take shaky, uncertain steps towards wooing in an angry and threatening world. Unfortunately, the play is frequently hijacked by ear-splitting "karaoke" (original) songs, an endless stream of pointlessly zany characters (a blood-stained butcher, a swearing, a librarian in combat boots, a guileless russian poet, etc etc), and a lot of general weirdness for weirdness' sake. And without spoiling too much, let me just say NO MORE UNNECESSARY NUDITY! For pete's sake. We don't always need to see someone's peepee to understand their vulnerability.

On the other hand, the play has some interesting stuff to say. The world these characters live in is bizarre, but their sense of something ominous approaching feels somehow accurate in it's representation of the oppresive fear we live with today. The rabid wolf is howling outside the window. Children are disappearing. Something nasty really is coming for us. Rapp's grotesque imagination is at it's best when he's riffing on these fears.

Whatever good intentions Rapp has, they're almost entirely obfuscated by the layers of craziness he's piled on, and things aren't helped by Carolyn Cantor's over-the-top staging. The production lives somewhere between The Rocky Horror Picture Show and a Blues' Clues acid trip. I actually think this could be an interesting piece if it was directed in a way that made the characters seem like humans instead of robots, and if they got rid of most (if not all) of the songs.

If you're the type that can stomach a lot of extraneous weirdness, you might really dig this play. For me, it was a huge turnoff. But hey, it's previews, maybe they'll make some good cuts and adjustments and find the focus. In another world, I think I would love it as a 90-minute two-hander. In fact, word on the street is that Adam Rapp has been tied up working on his show at The Flea, so the show might go through some transformations in the coming days and weeks.