Losing All Their Religion in ‘Red-Hot’

Existential alienation, rage and bloodshed constitute the price tag for abandoned spiritual values, according to first-time German playwright Kerstin Specht. She makes a powerful case for that formula of despair in “The Little Red-Hot Man,” which benefits from particularly lucid and artful direction by Frederique Michel at Santa Monica’s City Garage.

The loss of religion blankets Specht’s dissection of a three-generation family mired in joyless conventionality in a nameless border town. With the reunification of Germany, shame before others has replaced an internalized moral code as the social glue governing behavior. Sullen and reclusive over the suicide of her husband, the Mother (Strawn Bovee) has even given up attending communion because she “feels their eyes like little pricks on my back.”

Grandma (Laura McCann) has lost all emotional connection to the world around her and vacillates between reminiscences of happier times and futile attempts to buy the attention of her grandson (Leonard Shields) with her ever-dwindling possessions.

This loutish young man is more concerned with fleeing home and having sex with his waifishly erotic girlfriend (Eileen O’Connell), but his mother thwarts him at every turn. Denied both guidance and an outlet for his post-adolescent impulses, the son’s pent-up rage builds to truly red-hot intensity.

Framed in an eerily lit, dilapidated domestic set (by Charles A. Duncombe), Michel’s staging is steeped in the stylistic signatures of European avant-garde theater--replete with nudity, intense introspective monologues and deliberate, atmospheric pacing pierced with outbursts of emotional intensity. As usual, Godot fails to put in an appearance.

* “The Little Red-Hot Man,” City Garage, 1340 1/2 4th St. (alley), Santa Monica. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5:30 p.m. Ends Sept. 21. $17.50 (Sundays pay-what-you-can). (310) 319-9939. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.