East Coast Theater

In the basement of the Church of the Sacred Covenant on West 71st Street, just off upper Broadway, a new theatre company has opened a new play, "Bobby Supreme," the story of a small-time comedian turned big-time performance artist who begins to self-destruct both onstage and off. With distant echoes of Odets, playwright J.B. Miller turns rapid-fire scatology into poetry, a machine gun aimed at the heart. Fuse this writing with a great group of young actors and a director (David Millman) who knows how to create a marvelous, fluid style of ensemble acting, and the result is an exhilarating knockout production.

David Burke plays Bobby Supreme wonderfully, with the crazy, manic energy of a man racing headlong toward the edge of a cliff, even as he knows he has passed the point of his own exhaustion.

The play opens with Bobby Supreme aiming a monologue at the audience, miming masturbation as he describes having sex with a woman who dies at high tide, trapping his private parts in her corpse as rigor mortis sets in. But when the lights go up on the stage behind him, we discover that he is in his hotel suite trying to work out a new routine with the help of Angel, his lifetime partner, played by Joanne DiMauro with a wonderful combination of tough love and angry fatigue.

Julius Bremer is nicely naturalistic as the reporter who wants to know why on the previous night Supreme invited a girl from the audience onstage and then brutally beat her up before a cheering crowd.

With luscious enthusiasm, actress Lisa Anne Sclar plays the battered 17-year-old who refuses to leave Bobby's bed the morning after; and with consummate cool, Lisa Collins plays a society woman who wants Bobby to do a benefit performance for the homeless. When he counter-offers instant sex, a challenge match takes some unexpected turns.

Even though "Bobby Supreme" needs more plot and a real ending, the 0result is nevertheless a tour de force. Expert lighting by Mark Schuyler replicates the violet spots of a mega-event.

Produced by the Basic Theater of New York City, at the Church of the Sacred Covenant, 150 W. 71st St., Nov. 5-25.