'Valhalla' brings pyrotechnics to Theater Project

BY WILLIAM WESTHOVEN

Talk about opening a show with a bang. The intermission of Friday's premiere performance of "Valhalla" at the Theater Project featured an Independence Day-worthy fireworks display.

You don't get that kind of pizzazz on Broadway, let alone a New Jersey theater with fewer than 100 seats. And the play was pretty good, too.

Full disclosure reveals that Cranford's rain-delayed fireworks in Nomahegan Park coincided with this performance across the street at Union County College, where the pyrotechnics were limited to a few staged gunshots. But some combustible and fearless performances helped the audience survive Paul Rudnick's wild and occasionally exhausting comedy.

Piscataway native Rudnick's abstract and edgy history lesson ties two seemingly random places in time -- 19th century Bavaria and 1940s Texas. The former introduces us to Ludwig (Dennis DaPrile), the infamous "Mad King" who was dethroned for the madness of building some beautiful castles that are now part of the region's identity.

The latter subject is equally mad and dangerously angry. Abused by his parents, James (Kevin Sebastian) becomes a delinquent who eventually beds the prom queen, Sally (Jenelle Sosa), but prefers her fiancé, the varsity quarterback, Henry Lee (Stephen Medvidick).

Ludwig, we learn in alternating scenes, also prefers the company of men, giving us the first link between Bavaria and James' backwater, Bible Belt town. The second is that both, in their own, unique ways, are seeking true beauty at all costs.

With the two Equity professionals in the cast, Gail Lou and Rick Delaney, playing multiple roles, these four talented young actors romp through madcap scenes overflowing with comedy ranging from dry one liners to shockingly profane bursts of intensity. Early on, Rudnick pushes too hard, almost daring the audience to take offense. But if you stick with it, his dysfunctional characters become more sympathetic than you could possibly imagine at intermission.

"Valhalla" takes liberties with, but follows some real history, as Ludwig deals with a Prussian invasion and an obsession with Wagnerian opera. James and Henry Lee end up on a troop ship to Europe, where they parachute to within visiting distance of Ludwig's castles. There, they rediscover their attraction.

Tragedy ends both story lines, but the attraction of "Valhalla" is the laughs and, in the case of this production, a tremendously entertaining cast.

DaPrile somehow endears a whiny fop of a free-spending, clueless monarch, never losing the childlike innocence of the character, even as he ages from 10 to adulthood. Sebastian has the tougher job of selling James, who revels in ruining the lives of classmates who never wronged him. He smolders with James Dean intensity, but is even better in more subtle moments, such as when Sally accuses him of stealing.

"I didn't steal it," he says quietly and unapologetically. "I needed it."

Sosa has fun playing Sally as a Legally Blonde airhead, obsessed with superficial beauty. She admires the deeds of Eleanor Roosevelt, but wonders, "Can you imagine how much more she could have accomplished if she was pretty?"

Medvidick also works hard, fearlessly fending off, and succumbing to, James' advances.

Lou and Delaney work the perimeter, hamming it up in roles of various genders, accents and octaves. Sosa also multitasks as a humpback princess who finds a soulmate, if not a bedmate, in Ludwig, and becomes the nexus for a series of humpback jokes that yank guilty laughs from the audience. Bad boy Rudnick also includes some absurdly inspired song-and-dance numbers, one of which would fit well in a Mel Brooks movie.

Artistic director Mark Spina keeps a complex production on course, spilling over a Spartan, but functional stage, which in this intimate space is only four rows from the back of the room.

"Valhalla" may not be for the faint of heart, but it's a comedy of operatic proportion. Don't expect fireworks, but the floor show is a gas.