Unleashing the fervor of a true-believer preacher man

The voice comes out of the dark to find you. “Doomed. Doomed. Doooomed.” Dr. Rev. Cotton Slocum has seen The End, and you shall burn in everlasting fire unless you heed his word. Lights up, and he’s here among us: frozen wave of a pompadour, powder blue suit, vowels thick as Texas ribs, offering toll-free salvation and an unforgettable act of theater, courtesy of V.J. Foster, now starring in “Carnage, A Comedy,” at the Actors’ Gang.

“You look out at the audience,” he says. “What’s the feeling in the house? Who’s having fun, who’s looking away? Where’s the grump? The other night, when I got to the line, ‘Your expensive designer outfit will not save you,’ a woman in the audience said, ‘OK,’ and started taking off her clothes. I said ‘Ho-no, no, do not show me your underwear. That is not the way to honor our Lord in this temple.’ ”

Foster’s TV preacher man is the outsized center of Adam Simon and Tim Robbins’ freewheeling 1987 satire on religious extremism, resurrected to celebrate the Gang’s 25th anniversary. The show rubbernecks the evangelical train wreck of Slocum and his posse: a wheelchair-bound former “motorcycle slut,” a pair of wide-eyed country singers, a righteous hand puppet named Foo Foo and a sinister protege with dreams of leading God’s Army.

The revival eerily underscores what the 1987 premiere foresaw -- the militarization of the religious right -- has become a reality. For example, Blackwater Worldwide, the private security contractor founded by Christian conservative Erik Prince, has received more than $1 billion in U.S. government contracts since its inception in 1997.

But it’s Foster’s Slocum who delivers “Carnage’s” heart, soul and scale -- a sweat- and spit-fueled performance that knocks audience members back into their seats and reminds us theater can have the force of revelation.

“He is a believer,” Foster, 47, says, reflecting on his character at a cafe in Studio City. “A real charismatic Pentecostal. This guy believes in his place in the rapture. In Act 2, when he’s wandering the desert, waiting to be lifted up into heaven, he’s bargaining with God: ‘I’ve preached the word. I’ve raised money for you, I’ve saved souls.’ And there he is in this place of desolation, with the rest of the unsaved. He doesn’t understand what God is doing. It’s terrifying.”

Foster grew up with God’s word close to home, the eighth of nine children in a Bay Area Catholic family. His father was going to become a priest until he was drafted into World War II. “The war changed things,” Foster says. Nevertheless, Vincent Jeffrey -- named after cool private eye Jeff Spencer from “77 Sunset Strip” -- had a dozen years of religious education. “The notion of a spiritual relationship with a creator sunk in at a young age,” he says. “But Catholicism as I knew it was too regimented, too restrictive. You know what scripture is going to be read on which day, months in advance. Life is a little more spontaneous than that.”

It wasn’t until he enrolled at UCLA that spontaneity showed up and offered him a gig. An upperclassman named Tim Robbins cast Foster in “Ubu Roi” (you were expecting “The Odd Couple”?). He fell in with a crowd that included Catherine Hardwicke (“Thirteen”), Ron Campbell, Lee Arenberg, Cynthia Ettinger and Laurence Olivier’s son, Richard. Foster felt liberated. “I came from a homogenous suburban upbringing with a lot of conformity and structure. Tim was a free spirit. There was no hesitation about thumbing your nose at the man. Everything he tried was bold, rough around the edges.”

Robbins remembers Foster as “a bit of a jock. I loved the way V.J. approached acting, he was very physical. The group was a combination of punk rockers and athletes. We started a softball team called Male Death Cult. You know, we were theater guys, so anything to put fear into our opponents.”

The Gang’s thrash theater style had yet to harness its testosterone. Robbins and Foster both cite a series of 1984 workshops as the transforming moment. In 1984, Ariane Mnouchkine’s Theatre du Soleil came to the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, and Soleil member Georges Bigot ran an acting intensive that set the Gang on its ear.

“Georges’ basic tenet was that an actor had to earn the right to be onstage, and that you do that by investing in your character a heightened state of emotion: happiness, sadness, fear or anger,” explains Foster. “Your portrayal had to be based on truth. It had to be in the eyes. If you didn’t bring it, he’d tell you to get off stage.”

Robbins admits Bigot’s thespian gong show freaked him out. “But then I saw what he was getting at. There can’t be any time wasted on stage. Every line is more exciting if it’s connected to something at stake. It changed the situations I put actors in as a writer.”

As the Gang embraced Bigot’s approach, the country was going through a different kind of conversion. “Oliver North had just gone before the nation,” remembers Robbins. “New cable channels were swarming with televangelists. We wanted to say something about what was happening.”

“Carnage’s” fever-pitch style sprang from their shift in aesthetic, Robbins says. “Georges’ method made getting to ideas much faster. We went to conception to script to rehearsal to performance in four weeks.”

The show premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s 1987 Angel’s Flight series. Foster was in the cast, along with Jack Black and others. Arenberg, now a regular in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, played Slocum. Their combustive energies carried them to the Edinburgh Festival and then on to the Public Theater in New York in 1989. By that time, the Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart sex scandals had erupted. Critics accused the company of chasing headlines. “Actually,” Foster says, “we’d been ahead of the news.”

Robbins acknowledges that “people don’t want to hear certain things at certain times, but there’s nothing you can do about that. You just have to keep looking for the truth.” Case in point: The company’s production of “1984,” now on tour, is striking a chord with George Orwell’s fictional government’s insistence on the “unseen enemy that we’re always almost about to capture.” Foster, also the Gang’s associate artistic director, says they’re discussing taking “Carnage” on the road as well.

Though Foster credits Arenberg for creating Slocum, Robbins sees the revival as having a deeper emotional impact because of Foster’s age and experience. “The sense of loss and tragedy is so much more pronounced. V.J. is stunning in the discoveries he’s made.”

Those discoveries change nightly. Director Beth Milles says Foster improvises during each show. “Whatever it takes, he’s going to engage with the audience. V.J. is willing to cross that boundary, really share the experience. He’s open, in the sense of a vessel. He’s permeable. It’s harder for him, but it makes for more powerful theater.”

The Gang has been accused of haranguing the converted -- using its satirical edge to insist on a perspective rather than stage questions.

Foster counters with vehemence: “We’re going to comment on something we believe needs to be talked about. In a professional way. We have craft. And then hope our work inspires everyone to reconsider their position. We love when people disagree with us, but we don’t control who comes to see our productions. What’s the alternative? Shut up and do ‘Oklahoma’?”

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‘Carnage,

a Comedy’

Where: The Actors’ Gang, Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays

Ends: March 29

Price: $20 to $25

Contact: (310) 838-GANG