The Judas Kiss

ArtsWest

Through Feb 5.
It is very important to note that in this competent production of The Judas Kiss, the man who plays Oscar Wilde's young and aristocratic lover, Lord Alfred Douglas (John W. Bartley), is blond and Germanic. There are two reasons for this: one, late in his life, Lord Alfred Douglas became a Nazi sympathizer; and two, the sexual dynamic generated by the coupling of an outsider (Wilde, a talented Irishman) and an insider (Douglas, a rich Englishman) is one of the last areas of interest concerning the very famous fall of Oscar Wilde. By making Douglas Aryan in character and appearance, director Miko Premo exposes a fascinating flaw in that relationship. The Judas Kiss is not about the persecution of homosexual lovers but about Wilde's self-destructive attraction to the power of his English oppressor.

What is it that makes a good man like Wilde fall in love with a bad man like Douglas--a man who would ultimately support one of the most evil causes of the 20th century? In Premo's play, Douglas is thoroughly unlikable, a born brat, a vacuum into which any emotional investment is entirely lost. Wilde, played rather loudly by Christopher E. Zinovitch, is full of the expected wit and brilliance; he has depth and a valid connection with those who are close to him. But despite his great mind and will, he cannot overcome his blond master. The slave is doomed to dependency and death.

The best that this production has to offer is its examination of slave dependency. The first half takes place in the Cadogan Hotel, hours before Wilde's arrest; the second half is set in Italy, where Wilde and Douglas are exiled in the deep twilight of their once-glorious love affair. Despite Wilde's long speeches about how his love for the Lord cost him everything (literary reputation, children, and so on) we can't feel sorry for him as we do, say, for Sampson of the Old Testament--Sampson's locks (the source of his strength) were cut while he slept. In full consciousness, Wilde surrenders his intellectual strength to the blinding sexual power of the master race. CHARLES MUDEDE

Daytime TV

Wing-It Productions at Historic University Theater

Through Feb 11.
This long-form improv show from Jet City actors draws from vagaries of the afternoon soap opera and results in just over an hour of mediocre improv. The performance I saw incorporated the requisite Machiavellian power plays and betrayed a faint homoerotic fixation among several of the actors. Two sets of commercials interrupted the drama to advertise random objects collected from the audience (or not so random--I'm not saying that the ballpoint pen promoting Viagra was a plant, but the owner of that hard plastic object clearly knew what to expect).

The actors seemed to relish the opportunity to let their hysterias all hang out, but the experience was less satisfying for the audience. Apart from the two euphemism-spiked Viagra commercials and a squealing parody of KOMO 4's Cindi Rinehart and her ilk, the faux soap fell sadly short of skewering its subjects. Even the format of the show seemed beyond the reach of the cast--the "previously on" segments never matched the scenes I'd just seen, and the spasmodic double-tableaux that Daytime TV used to signify the end of scenes (in the place of close-up zooms) were generally nonsensical. And on top of all that, most of the actors broke character at least once. Audiences wouldn't take that sort of sloppiness from a straight production, no matter how humble, and they shouldn't put up with it in improv either. ANNIE WAGNER

Seattle Neutrino Project

Market Theater

Through Feb 12.
You have to applaud the audacity of screening an improvised, practically live movie in front of a paying audience. The project is bound to fail in all sorts of ways, so the fact that Seattle Neutrino Project strings scenes together at all is impressive. That they try to imitate the style and tenor of an audience-suggested film (Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, the night I attended) is stupefying. Maybe setting the bar so impossibly high is a sneaky method of lowering expectations. Needless to say, I saw nothing that resembled Jarmusch that evening.

The biggest problems with the performance I saw could have been alleviated at least in part by making the movie less improvisational. (Is that sacrilegious?) The three separate storylines never intersected--and maybe that was for the best, because their styles were completely incompatible. In the most developed plot, a talent agent's first date was rudely interrupted by a fire-eater in search of work. Another storyline, which was trying very hard to be lyrical, involved a man who was haunted by the ghost of his dead sister. And then there was a first-person bit about a jilted lover plotting revenge. The actors and crew already enjoy some lead-time to get to their locations and sketch out preliminary plans, so why not stall even longer? Showing a few short films first would at least allow the three crews to coordinate. As for making it look like Dead Man--well, they could have at least made the thing black and white. ANNIE WAGNER