In the canon of Hollywood-is-full-of-greedheads plays, David Rabe's 1984 excoriation of tinseltown decadence ranks as one of the most potentially tedious, its boys-will-be-pigs antics nowadays almost as quaint as those of Sinatra and his frat buddies. Under Dane Rhodes' remarkably coherent direction, however, the male-bonding dynamic emerges as no different than in Milwaukee, Buffalo or Baton Rouge, and the Beverly Hills homies' failure to prevent their comrade's fatal breakdown based not so much in flawed character but a culture in which booze, blow and bimbos are so readily available, that it becomes easy to see them as panaceas, rather than panopathogens. Likewise easy is for energetic young actors to play these overaged adolescents at full-tilt outrageous. But Rhodes does not allow his cast to wallow in Stanislavskian self-indulgence. He creates distinctly varied personalities displaying clearly discernible responses. Even the three passively disposable women who serve as foils for the men (and the plot) are endowed with individual choices and hints of intriguing depth.
Substance-abusing scumbags must always come to Bad Ends, of course, but the production recently closing at Le Chat Noir transcends sensationalism to generate genuine sympathy for its waifs-in-Wonderland.
