THEATER REVIEW : ‘Freaks’ Slips at End but It’s a Fun Ride

If you were to encounter Carl (Bill Pullman), his bride Betty (Carol Kane) or his sister Sister (Holly Hunter) in real life, you’d probably scram.

Meeting them at the Met Theatre, in Beth Henley’s “Control Freaks,” is safer and a lot more fun. Henley wants the meeting to be more than that but, at this point, it isn’t.

Sister is just back from jury duty, where she “threw the book” at an unnamed “rotten apple” who’s probably no more rotten than any of the onstage characters. Much to her surprise and barely suppressed dismay, her too-affectionate brother Carl has just brought home his fourth wife, Betty.

Betty enthusiastically supports Carl’s scheme to open an emporium called Furniture World. They want Sister to become a partner. None of them knows anything about furniture but, hey, how much do you have to know?

We get the hint that all of this takes place in contemporary Los Angeles. Betty claims she works as a “cold reading” coach for actors, she and Carl were just married in Las Vegas, and their yard is decorated by “Malibu lights” (Neil Patel and Rand Ryan, designers). The locale certainly doesn’t seem to be the small-town South where most of Henley’s plays are set, or the Wild West where her recent “Abundance” was set.

But this West is wild in its own way. Sleazy Paul Casper (Wayne Pere) enters the picture as the potential seller of the building where Furniture World will be located. He soon emerges as a way for Sister to prove she can get a man--and as Betty’s secret stud.

Paul is somewhat like a twisted parody of the gentleman caller in “The Glass Menagerie” (a play cited by Henley, in a recent interview, as one that her mother had acted in). In fact, an alternate title for Henley’s own play could be “The Crass Menagerie.”

The current title, however, is an accurate description of the characters. They’re all desperate to grasp as much control as possible, because they’re all so lacking in it. In fact, Sister might be satisfied just to master her own fractured personality; we quickly learn that she argues with herself in two distinct voices--one gentle, one rough--when she’s alone, and she chooses from a rack full of radically different wigs when she faces the world. But while Sister is the most obvious loony, the others are also buffeted by deep-seated fears and passions that will never allow them a genuine semblance of self-control.

Henley’s people are indeed “freaks” more than real people, deeply exaggerated for effect. This would be fine--as both writer and director, Henley knows how to milk the laughs from these far-out folks--except that she doesn’t stop there.

In the last couple of scenes of “Control Freaks,” the root of Carl’s and Sister’s problem is too explicitly diagnosed, and suddenly we’re supposed to be deeply moved by Sister’s plight. It doesn’t happen. It’s too late to stir up this kind of sentiment and the ending falls flat.

Until then, however, it’s undeniably entertaining to watch these crazies go over the edge.

No wonder Hunter chose to co-produce this play (with David Beaird); she was able to give herself a role that any actress would covet, and she’s brilliant in it. In a recent interview, she spoke of how the characters are “tightrope walking,” and she literally embodies this image in her performance, moving in a stylized manner that combines tremulous fear and a sensual exhilaration.

One of Henley’s best lines is about the benefits of cages, but at the end of the play, Sister is set free from her own cage in a gymnastic stunt. We’re too aware of the mechanics of the stunt for it to take flight as intended, but Hunter carries off her part with admirable grace.

*

Grace isn’t the word for Pullman or Kane. These two are hilariously clumsy, ruthless people whose lovey-dovey antics in the kitchen--involving such food staples as milkshakes and bubbles and poisons--turn the grotesque into comic gold. They each get to do a great snit, as well as a funny sex scene with a forbidden partner. Pullman’s Carl affects an Elvis swagger, wears a sloppy hairpiece, and could use further toilet training. Kane’s Betty favors high heels and polka dots (costumes by Ruth Myers and Luke Reichle).

The lesser-known Pere is up to the standards of this ensemble with a rigorously revolting caricature. This swain’s brief courtship of Sister has a gymnastic flair that even Cyrano de Bergerac might admire.

When the laughs stop, the play falters (Sister: “I’m crying colored tears and no one is below”). But it happens infrequently enough in this long one-act that on the way home, it’s the laughs that linger.

*

“Control Freaks,” Met Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hollywood. Wednesdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 8. $20. (213) 957-1152. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.