Don’t Stop for Strangers: “Viewer Discretion Advised”

A preppy milquetoast called Norm (Carson Alexander) picks up a mysterious hitchhiker named Bud (Bob D’Haene) and brings him to his home in “Viewer Discretion Advised,” a “Black Comedy Thriller” by Ed Stevens, presented Off-Off Broadway by New York’s Wreckless Stage Company through Oct. 2.

Bud is creepily ingratiating in an Eddie-Haskell-meets-Ted-Bundy sort of way, and—although all signals scream, “Norm, for cripes’ sake, ditch this weirdo, now!”—something in Norm indulges the creep. Before our eyes, Norm swiftly becomes a mouse batted about by a malevolent cat that’s about to stop playing with its lunch and start crunching skull. Is Norm pulled into Bud’s spell because he envies the stranger’s masculine “mojo.” Or is there a sexual attraction going on? Bud has plenty of techniques to keep Norm under his control: he taunts, challenges, demeans, flatters, flirts, and goads him into a violent fantasy about his hated boss.

Eventually Norm’s girlfriend Anne (the effective Katelin Wilcox) shows up and is drawn into the web of conflicting stories the men have told about themselves. Playwright Stevens does well in creating an air of menace as the intermission-less 90-minute play moves toward its conclusion.

There are echoes of Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” and—especially—Edward Albee’s “Zoo Story” in “Viewer Discretion Advised.” What is tricky for the actors and for director Cynthia Dillon is finding the right performance style here. Because the play deals with extreme behaviors, it almost seems as though a more hyper-real, even absurdist attitude might work. But would that kind of stylization put a damper on the play’s tension, which needs to be rooted in realism?

In any case, some of the characters’ behaviors seem undefined. For instance, when Bud and Norm sit close beside each other on a love seat or when Bud massages Norm’s shoulders and all but reaches for a nipple, there’s neither the sense that Norm is getting turned on nor the feeling that he is about to have a gay-panic attack. Alexander doesn’t project much of anything, one way or the other.

Nevertheless, the play keeps a grip on the viewer. As for the black comedy, it’s there—and in fact is so shrouded that some truly funny lines didn’t get laughs at the performance I saw—such as when Norm says to Bud: “You keep saying I’m paranoid—do you have something against me?”

Special credit goes to D’Haene, whose approach to Bud seems to get richer as the evening progresses. The portrayal truly will remind you of whack jobs you’ve met and immediately wished you hadn’t.

For more information, go to www.ViewerDiscretionAdvisedThePlay.com.