Dear devil

Henry Flamethrowa tests the faith

by Carolyn Clay

HENRY FLAMETHROWA. By John Belluso. Directed by Lisa Peterson. Set design by Rachel Hauck. Costumes by William Lane. Lighting by Mimi Jordan Sherin. Sound by Darron West. With Joanna P. Adler, Fred Sullivan Jr., and Michael Esper. At Trinity Repertory Company through February 4.

Michael Esper and Joanna P. Adler

Henry Flamethrowa is an intriguing new work that ultimately goes up in smoke. Rhode Island native John Belluso has created a streamlined modern-suburban model of Dante's Inferno, from its famous opening lines to the self-recognition that regains the stars. But the result is a play about belief that is, from start to finish, unbelievable. It has a pay-attention premise, nesting overlays of religious mysticism and debunking, and a title character that is its one true, if fantastical, element. Henry Rhamelower (we're told the name is German) is a smart, surly 16-year-old with the eponymous Internet moniker whose most urgent occupation is sending e-mail to the devil.

Neither is Henry the only unusual inhabitant of the Rhamelower household (which in the play's Trinity Rep premiere looks like a hellfire-licked version of chez Carol and Mike Brady, with flame-colored walls and orange shag carpet). Henry's sibling, Lilja, lies upstairs in her bedroom in a coma. To her are attributed, à la Worcester's Audrey Santo, healing powers bestowed by the Virgin Mary. The siblings' father, Peter, is Lilja's faithful keeper, a man whose cheerful religiosity masks inner doubt and who addresses his disturbed son's needs by buying him a VCR. The catalyst to the clan's religio-dysfunctional family drama is the phoniest-baloneyest newspaper reporter ever to tread a stage. Ostensibly sent by NPR to document the Lilja phenomenon, Beth (rhymes with death) Parker arrives without a tape recorder, sets out to trap Peter in a web of awkward sympathy, and at one point allows him a lingering kiss. Henry is sure she's the agent of his pen pal with a pitchfork, sent to save him from God -- who has a lot to answer for, beginning with the accident that disabled Lilja and including the snake-oil "freak show" of which she is currently star attraction.

Belluso takes a lot of risks with Henry Flamethrowa, which is, at its core, an allegory about the exploitation of the disabled and an unfortunately stacked exploration of faith. These are wrapped in a sometimes ludicrous cat-and-mouse game among the deranged but winning Henry, his benignly miracle-pushing dad, and the reporter who'll do anything to get her story, including enter it. The play, though compelling, has a number of problems, some of them surmountable. But what it's doing at this point in its development in a full-scale professional production is a mystery tantamount to that of Lilja's healing powers. Maybe the BVM is Trinity Rep's dramaturg. (None is listed, and it's hard to decide whether Henry Flamethrowa's most pressing need is a shrink or a play doctor.)

Belluso, an acknowledged agnostic, states that he intends a balance in the play between faith and its denial. But he leaves no doubt that Lilja is a sham, her only "miracle" Henry's too-easy absolution and emotional healing. And apart from Henry, a viably troubled teen hacker with seething fantasies that his fingers are about to become disengaged from his body and commit the unspeakable, the characters are implausible. Peter is depicted as a pleasant near-idiot hiding behind the "utter certainty" of faith but in fact "full of lies," his desperate faith in Lilja's holiness an outgrowth of his desperate fear that Henry is evil and that death is no transition but an end. As for Beth, well, she turns on more dimes than a dollar, vacillating among unprincipled journalist, clever Internet sleuth, little-girl lost, and agent for salvation (it is she who convinces Henry that, even absent God, Lilja's life has value). Among the play's sillier elements is the sexual interplay between cuddly Peter (whose "heart" makes him "try to do stupid things") and Beth. Henry, when he isn't channeling Dante (or perhaps Stephen King), stares incredulously at their flirtation. I'm with him.

All this said, the Trinity production commits to Belluso's ambitious, incredible play. Mark Taper Forum resident director Lisa Peterson is also collaborating with Belluso on The Body of Bourne, a play about disabled turn-of-the-century critic Randolph Bourne that she will direct in LA in the spring. Here she and the actors approach the characters as if they made sense (though the climactic scene in which Peter slugs his son while pronouncing him holy is so schizoid and melodramatic that it drew titters on opening night). Trinity stalwart Fred Sullivan Jr. coats Peter's angst in a cheerful mien. And newcomer Joanna P. Adler brings an interesting, angular nervousness to Beth, whom Belluso paints into a rather neat "contrapasso" (in Dante's hell, a punishment that befits a crime). Rumpled, raging Michael Esper is particularly effective as the insolent, avenging geek of the title. But Henry Flamethrowa is the sort of mystic, metaphoric work that requires a leap of faith to clear the crags of incredulity. And you don't make it.