'Chicks' entertaining late-night theater

For years, what the Pittsburgh theater scene has needed to demonstrate its growth and variety is late-night theater, with a preference for comic parody or satire.

But, if we had it, would Pittsburgh support it?

Late Night Cabaret at Theatre Square was a hopeful development, but it faltered and is just now attempting a tentative, occasional comeback.

Now there's another attempt, and I call it a winner, but will it catch on? Under the heading of its sporadic Midnight Radio series, Bricolage, the young company that aims at "making artful use of what's at hand," is staging a late-night version of Trista Baldwin's '60s biker flick parody, "Chicks With ... " The subtitle, just to make the genre crystal clear, is "Bad Girls on Bikes Doing Bad Things."

The rival biker gangs are Bad Snake, led by Dixie (Lissa Brennan), and Satan's Cherries, led by Varla (Dana Hardy) but taken over by Vespa de Amour (Lisa Ann Goldsmith). The vicinity of Three Mile Island adds an atmosphere of radioactive mutation, culminating in a giant phallic growth, and the rivalry ends up with chick-on-chick mud-wrestling.

You get the idea. This is good-natured transgressive parody, raunchy, silly and purposefully slap-dash, with a touch of innocence to boot. Under Tami Dixon's direction, the performance style is deadpan, face-front and declarative, with all the violence comically mimed and italicized by Brad Peterson's exclamatory, cartoonish sound design.

Hardy, improbably (given the role) pregnant, and Goldsmith, crowned with that scepter-like growth, take the acting honors, along with Gayle Pazerski as the chicks' chick, Jason Planitzer as a very funny foot soldier and Gregory Johnstone as a variety of stupid men slapped into submission.

At their best, these shadow their broad comic acting with some wistful underplaying, which makes it all the funnier. But that's missing in Brennan's tough girl and especially in Adrienne Wehr's Cindi, the sweet young thing who turns into a monster. Wehr plays her over-the-top from the start, tearing every passion to tatters, overdoing the joke.

Those who remember the origins of "Chicks With ..." two years ago as a staged reading may miss that sketchier silliness, As of last week's opening, it seemed to take itself too seriously, needing to be brisker, lighter, faster.

But it sure makes Liberty Avenue a more entertaining place on Friday and Saturday nights this month.

Post-Gazette theater critic Christopher Rawson can be reached at 412-263-1666 or crawson@post-gazette.com.