Reaction to 1980s hair metal is visceral and unexplainable: You like it or loathe it, and reactions to Slow Children will skew along those Yngwie Malmsteen–flavored lines. The plot is summoned and sacrificed in the first two minutes: A police officer is handcuffed to a sofa in a room decorated with Iron Maiden and Poison paraphernalia. His kidnapper, a guileless Alice Cooper–looking rocker wearing a tiger-print leotard—or is it a unitard, as the kidnapper claims, or some other kind of 'tard entirely?—tries to figure out what to do with the cop while his roommate, a talented Slash-like stoner, and their girlfriends all get in on the act.

I feel like I've seen this kind of hostage-comedy play dozens of times, although that could include sitcoms. Sides are taken, lines are drawn, love dies and is born again, this time in cop and glam-rock costumes. It's a hostage comedy meets '80s band VH1 Behind the Music episode—the hammering together of two clichés to produce a spark.

The best acting in the show is the quietest: Tim Gouran mercifully underplays Timo, star guitarist in the band Fistin' the Missus, as a decent dumb guy. It's a smart move, because everybody else pretty much screams their way through. Andrew Clawson, as kidnapper Rikki, screeches and fiddles with his hair like Cher on a crystal-meth bender. Brandon Whitehead, as the cop, is at times charming, but wallows through the middle of the performance, where all he's required to do is act illogically and bellow swears. There are funny rock jokes, and the character entrances are so great that you regret that the play only has six actors, but the volume gets stuck at 11 from the beginning. Slow Children forgets that the cheesy greatness of hair metal also lies in the melodrama of the power ballad. It's like listening to "Welcome to the Jungle" on repeat, when a little "Patience" would've helped immeasurably.