Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

Coming off a hit run in the 2009 International Fringe Festival, 666, an 80-minute physical comedy romp through death row and all the way to hell, must set some kind of record for dick jokes in one presentation. The Madrid-based Yllana, responsible for the (admittedly sometimes funny) smut on display currently at the Minetta Lane Theatre, literally sweat their asses off to deliver to an audience the ultimate in outlandishness. Picture, if you will, a wordless hybrid of Blue Man Group and Buster Keaton with no end to supreme perversion and you still might not approximate how lowbrow these guys are willing to go.

The four men-performed with gusto by Fidel Fernandez, Joseph Michael O'Curneen, Juan Ramos Toro and the seemingly-made-of-rubber Raul Cano-lead us through ten vignettes set in a maximum security prison. The fourth wall becomes an electrified fence (one of the men throws an invisible booger at it), and the segments employ the troupe's signature chorus of grunts, gooses and gallant gross-outs, and thumb their nose through gleeful pageants of capital punishment and prison rape (anal workouts play quite a role here), with a touch of audience participation at points (careful as it could easily be you, especially if you're female). And of course, there is the penis humor, ranging from the squirmy prospect of getting one's tool caught between metal double doors all the way to the size-obsessed finale, where you get a little more than you possibly, ahem, came for.

At a breezy 80 minutes, 666 is an ideal show for the fart-joke crowd (yup, there's some of those too) and that is not necessarily scant praise. In truth, Yllana are quite brave in their willingness to fuzz the lines of good taste, and some of their sequences are truly inventive, especially a pleasingly low-tech, cute bit with two inmates hanging on nooses played in full black back curtain, commedia dell'arte style and-my personal favorite-a routine barbershop shave that Sweeney Todd might have envied. But the less-is-more principle might have greatly enhanced other scenes, where the material is either far too telegraphed or just plain overextended. In fact, the show is often most agreeable at its most innocuous-for example, the bit where one of the men tries to solicit a female in the audience for a dance is kind of charming in an odd way, but unfortunately it goes on far too long as well.

One imagines that this type of performance piece will provoke a reaction not unlike the folks who witnessed "Springtime For Hitler" in The Producers (though the older gent seated next to me had a whale of a time), but despite not quite landing on two feet (or eight, as this case would dictate), you gotta hand it to Yllana. They will never be confused with a company that takes the safe route.