Demonology Fills Hugo House with Evil Laughter

Demonology, by Kelly Stuart, plays like a mash-up of LaBute's In the Company of Men and Roth's The Breast: it's a wicked take-down of corporatized misogyny and a surreal expedition into the realm of in-office lactation. It's laugh-out-loud funny, despite a second-act drought on satire and a "serious" wrap-up. Fledgling theatre company Next Stage presents it April 4-6, 10-13 & 17-20; Thurs-Sat 8 p.m.; Sundays 2 p.m.; tickets $17.50.

The setting is the executive suites at a baby formula manufacturer, though that's just gilding the satirical lily--it could be any executive suite. Deranged by the entrance of the breast-feeding temp Gina (a home run performance by Maggie Brothers), Joe De Martini is the executive in question. He's played by Alex Samuels, who looks like Jeff Goldblum's cousin and creates awkward, humiliating situations as effortlessly as Ricky Gervais, with the added bonus of blurting out terrible, soul-bearing "jokes" at high volume. He deals with a breast-feeding employee as if she's a terrorist.

Director Mark Jared Zufelt switches up the pace you might expect from a comedy, catching moments of office reverie and elasticizing them, as De Martini obsesses about his attractive, omni-competent temp, his paranoia growing in proportion to his dependency on her. Playwright Stuart's skewering of the boy's club isn't limited to mocking boorish passes and inappropriate jokes; male sexual privilege becomes a mask for infantile cravings. (And we do mean infantile.) If the play forgets what it set out to do in favor of solving a meaningful corporate sabotage mystery, it almost never loses its sense of humor. Which is of course what guys like.

Photo: Gina (Maggie Brothers) and Joe De Martini (Alex Samuels). Photo by John Ulman.