Lavender Lockeroom

F. Allen Sawyer's raunchy, Word for Word-style play is inspired by '50s-era pulp novels about gay self-discovery and (usually) conversion to a straight life. Sawyer reclaims the formula and turns it into an uproarious satire of old stereotypes, old social values, and bad prose. Lavender Lockeroom did well enough last spring in the Theatre Rhino Studio to return as a full-blown production upstairs, on the main stage; if you missed it then you're hereby ordered to go see it now. The hero, Vern, is a feverish, sensitive, hapless young agonist discovering an underworld of gay tendencies on the college football team. He's nearly gang-raped by three bullying studs after a failed date with the (female) campus slut. He runs -- "naked except for his argyle socks" -- into the arms of a handsome sophisticate named Bob, who tries to educate him in the art of passing as straight. Vern can't do it. His struggles with his seductress stepmother, trampy stepsister, and sour, crotchety dad (brilliantly played by Sandra Schlechter) belong to comic-book melodrama, but Sawyer directs the show with an over-the-top absurdity that also has an undercurrent of pathos. This is slapdash fiction-theater -- meaning not as carefully scripted as real Word for Word productions -- but David Bicha gives an all-or-nothing performance as Vern that should silence any detractors.