Theater review | There's little redemption for violent "Jerk" at OTB

Theater Review |

The boyish man onstage studies the audience members shyly as they file into the theater. Smiling awkwardly, he's the picture of pained self-consciousness — or maybe he's just feeling sheepish about all the dolls and puppets he has gathered around him.

But don't take him for an innocent.

This guy is an accomplice to murder — 27 murders, by one count — and he's about to tell you all about it.

"Jerk," created by French choreographer-director Gisèle Vienne, American writer Dennis Cooper and French performer Jonathan Capdevielle, is based on the true-crime case of 33-year-old Texan Dean Corll and his gay teen accomplices Wayne Henley and David Brooks. The show's conceit is that David (Capdevielle) is performing a puppet show for the audience, acting out the trio's grisly doings, perhaps as a form of therapy.

"Jerk" starts with torture, voyeurism, rape, dismemberment and necrophilia — and pretty much stays there for its hourlong duration.

Capdevielle, despite his marked French accent, almost has what it takes to carry off this tale of Texan mayhem. Certainly, his ventriloquist techniques lend the show what dramatic arc it has.

When David, in the show's final stretch, moves from "puppeteering" to "internalizing" the voices that haunt him, Capdevielle — his face inert, his lips motionless — projects the inflicted pain, the consummated lust and the death gargles of the murderers and their young male victims to eerie effect.

Still, that can't disguise the shortcomings of the script.

Punk writer Cooper is known for novels ("Frisk," "Closer") about gay youngsters mired in violence. His obsession, at least here, is as one-note as can be. There's no backdrop, no context, no hint as to what first drew Brooks and Wayne to "evil mastermind" Dean, or how Dean lured them into this homicidal binge.

There is some talk of how "real humans" are too complex to understand "no matter how hard you try." Better to kill someone, according to Dean. Then you can project whatever personality you like onto the corpse as you play with it.

Cooper also implies that most of the trio's victims were willing — so depressed, in fact, that they were just waiting for someone to kill them. Somehow, Cooper suggests, that makes these serial killings terribly important. Or profound. Or something.

Or maybe just a sad misuse of Capdevielle's considerable stage technique.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com