Under Construction

Playwright Charles L. Mee is a master at writing stageworthy replications of works by American artists. For two previous Humana Festivals of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville he put forth incisive examinations of Robert Rauschenberg and Joseph Cornell. He's back at the 33rd annual festival with a double-edged look at two other artists: Norman Rockwell, with his indelible Saturday Evening Post images of small-town America; and Jason Rhodes, whose controversial, three-dimensional, sex-drenched installations have been characterized as orgies of narrative art that ran amok. All three plays have been directed with infectious verve by Anne Bogart and stylishly performed by the SITI Company.

These incredible performers never miss a beat as they career from homespun vignettes dramatizing Rockwell's subjects to wild, frantic dances linked to the ephemeral jumbled art of Rhodes. For those who know little or nothing about Rhodes, the juxtaposition of his artistic style with the comfortably familiar Rockwell's could be off-putting. Mee's choice to attempt a connect in the disconnect is logical, however. The frisson is justified; a focus on Rockwell alone would be a saccharine overdose.

Still, the G-rated Rockwell episodes -- boys getting haircuts from a friendly barber, polite teenagers being instructed in dating rituals, Thanksgiving dinner for a family gathered around a table -- are nostalgic reminders of a time when Bing Crosby crooned "Dear Hearts and Gentle People" on the radio. It's a glorious, jubilant moment when the cast -- the boys with baseball bats and gloves, the girls as cheerleaders -- glides into a sassy, laid-back song and dance to "The Best Is Yet to Come."

At the other extreme is a raunchy segment of a woman seductively speaking lines from Anne Bannon's Beebo Brinker lesbian pulp novels being read by a salesman in his hotel room; a female poet's erotic verse about a sadistic encounter, and a prostitute's jovial hard-core monologue about her life and loves. When she breaks the fourth wall to quiz audience members about their sex lives, it's an intrusive shocker, especially when people docilely respond instead of taking offense.

Under Construction (the title applies to both America and its art) makes sage, effective use of excerpts from other writings part of its mosaic: Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," Joe Brainard's "I Remember," Charles Bukowski's portrait of his father who pretended to be rich and always voted Republican, and several others.