REVIEW: Love Bomb an Emotional Blast at The Catastrophic Theatre

“Now you better watch this and try to understand what’s going on…”

If that’s not a perfect dictate – coming from a 56-year-old movie – for the world premiere of Love Bomb, the fifth and latest collaboration between Brian Jucha and The Catastrophic Theatre, then I don’t know what is. It’s not even a dictate. It’s just about all you can do: Watch and try to understand.

So, here’s what I understood.

Love Bomb begins with fanfare – literally, the fanfare Alfred Newman composed to accompany the 20th Century Fox logo at the beginning of their films, its epic-ness perfectly rendered by sound designer Andrew Archer. An aptly dramatic reading of Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” follows, and then we meet seven characters about to have a séance, the goal of which is to “summon the spirit of love.”

Each character proclaims a different goal: One is “skeptical and looking for love.” One says they are “just here for the laughs and hopefully the love.” And another claims they are “not sure” why they’re there, but they are “definitely not looking for love.” They hold their séance, and in short order, one of the characters “disappears,” and we hear that there’s a serial killer (later deemed to be serial killers) outside the dancehall.

Oh, did I mention that the seven characters in Love Bomb are taxi dancers? Taxi dancing, that profession of yore Tina Turner sang about in “Private Dancer,” refers to people who dance with strangers for money. The taxi dancers in Love Bomb trip the light fantastic with patrons in the form of half-bodied mannequins in coats and wigs – quirkily done by prop designer Lauren Davis – on an elevated stage designed by Moon Papas Art (Matt Fries, Julian Luna, Boston Kassidy, and Cam Rowe).

And that concludes the “synopsis” part of the review. From here, the less said the better, but I will note that Love Bomb gets a generous assist from George Romero and John Russo – not to mention Jeff Dunham, S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, Judy Blume, Nevzat Çiftçi, Donna Summer, Valley of the Dolls, KATSEYE, a bucket of chicken from KFC, etc. – and, of course, singer-songwriter Melanie, whose songs Jucha utilizes throughout the show.

Art is subjective, so it’s up to each individual audience member to make meaning from what they experience at the theater. It’s true wherever you go, but no theater in town demands meaning-making from their audience quite like Catastrophic, and no show you see this season – until the next one at Catastrophic, probably – will allow for such an array of wildly disparate, mileage-may-vary interpretations than Love Bomb.
And for fun, here’s one of them.

Though it may seem par for the course in a show devised by Jucha and The Catastrophic Theatre for seven grownups to hold a kooky séance looking for love, maybe it’s just as desperate an act for these characters as it would be for anyone outside the walls of the theater – and maybe even more so.

The characters in Love Bomb are trying to summon love in a world where, as taxi dancers, they only experience relationships as transactional. In the dancehall, every bit of intimacy and companionship is commodified. And their disillusionment comes through loud and clear in the Melanie song each character sings.

Raven Flowers, played by Miika Stewart, sings about “leftover emotion from a couple of nights ago” during “Leftover Emotions” with a center-of-gravity finesse that they use to anchor the whole production.

Karina Pal Montaño-Bowers, bathed in blue light with a destructive tornado projected behind her (courtesy of the always first-rate Roma Flowers), beautifully asks, “Is she as pretty as me, huh?” seven different ways as Miss Ara Leon in “Any Guy.”

With some jaunty footwork, Noel Bowers’s Jack Merridew calls out people who are “building the halls with the outer walls” though they “haven’t got a thing within” during “The Good Guys,” while Kyle Sturdivant brings his about-to-burst energy to Jay Poulet as he sings “if I had a nickel for each time that I’ve been put on / I would be their nickel man” in “Nickel Song.”

Bryan Kaplún deftly delivers as the unlucky loser, embittered and dejected, as Billy when muses that he “never thought you’d find another he / You liked as well as me / But I guess I was wrong” during “I’m Back in Town.”
And Tamarie Cooper (who may claim “moment of the night” with her aggressive attempt to “love bomb” the audience) point blank says, “in my line of work a person could get hurt / A person could get worse / A person could get burned” as Francine Trotter in “The Champagne Song.”

It also may seem par for the course for there to be the sudden appearance of “serial killers.” But the “serial killers” outside the dancehall are described as ordinary-looking. They are predators wreaking havoc, though maybe not entirely unlike the emotional predators who have done their damage to the characters. At one point, a character even says if they don’t dance, maybe the “serial killers” will leave them alone (an example of masterfully borrowed text, by the way).

But the final performance of the evening is by Amy Bruce’s Annie, who sings “Take Me Home.” Bruce captures the song’s almost uncomfortable vulnerability perfectly, imploring someone to take her home with them. It’s a melancholic note showing that, much like when the group gathered for their séance at the beginning, they are still seeking love, even if it hurts them. They refuse still to go gentle into that good night.

So, are the “serial killers” patrons affected by radiation from the Venus probe? Is the unexpected appearance of a new character at the end a payoff to Raven asking, “Did she say NASA” earlier? Mercifully, Jucha left out Melanie’s “Brand New Key,” but what about the key on an oversized chain labeled “Brand New” that made its way around the cast?

I still have plenty of questions, but one you may be wondering is, “But were you not entertained?”

Yes, entertained and compelled by this deeply introspective mediation on love and what we bear for it, its poignancy ensconced in an absurd, weirdly familiar, and inexplicably funny package. But it’s Brian Jucha and The Catastrophic Theatre. Would you expect any less?

Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2:30 p.m. Sundays through December 7 at the MATCH, 3400 Main. For more information, call 713-521-4533 or visit catastrophictheatre.com. Pay-what-you-can (with a suggested price of $35).