Theatergoers taken for a ride in ‘Hellcab’

Touch up the makeup?

Perhaps some rouge on the hood. Eyeliner around the headlights. Powder to take the shine off the front grill. Lip gloss on the bumpers.

Sex up the chassis? Hey, theatrical pancake can spruce up only so much.

"They towed it down here, and they're going to tow it away," says director Troy Heard, whose prop department is ... Southwest Auto Wrecking in North Las Vegas. "We struck a little deal with them."

Portraying the title character (so to speak) of "Hellcab," a white, beat-up 1997 Dodge Intrepid is improbably but impressively parked inside -- yes, we said inside -- the cozy Black Box at Las Vegas Little Theatre, gobbling up much of its modest stage space.

Sorry to embarrass the old gal, but she is minus a couple body parts -- top, windshield, much of her right side, all sheared away, leaving an automotive amputee, weathered black and gray interior naked and exposed to audiences arriving this evening.

"It took five hours, four guys and a Sawzall," Heard says. "That cuts through anything." Missing an engine (this isn't a night of NASCAR dramatic readings, after all), this heap of car parts hosts a driver and his collection of human flotsam and jetsam hailing his "Hellcab."

Set in Chicago, Will Kern's 1992 theatrical speedster -- an intermissionless 75 minutes, with six actors playing 25 roles in 26 vignettes, plus one actor as the cabby -- takes us along for this circus on wheels, based on real events, and fueled with an adults-only energy.

"There's sex in the back of the cab, another woman has been raped -- it's a holiday show," says Heard, tongue wedged deeply in cheek, gazing at his Intrepid star at the Black Box, which, ironically, isn't much larger than an oversized garage. "It's a dark comedy. He has a monologue where he actually says, 'I drive a cab for Satan.' "

Passenger parade? Born-again Christians, a trio of druggies, bickering sisters, a drunken woman on welfare, a smug lawyer, boisterous visiting New Yorkers, a man spending his first Christmas without his recently deceased mother, and a horny couple who can't hold out for a motel, using the back seat for a tumble.

Funny, frightening, absurd and even poignant, the kaleidoscopic "Hellcab" was described by the Times of London as "a portrait of embattled human decency" and "a study of the intricacies of race, poverty and urban desperation."

Knockoff of HBO's "Taxicab Confessions"? Hardly. "Hellcab" debuted three years before the voyeuristic documentary series that followed cabbies and their often freaky fares in New York City and here in Las Vegas. "The difference is that ('Confessions') did not have a through-line," Heard says. "It's the cabby's day and his quest for redemption, for a way to reach out and touch somebody, to find some meaning in life. It's a bit existential."

Yet it races along with the zeal of a cab flying over a pothole to barrel through a yellow traffic light. "It's breakneck, it's crazy, it's insane," Heard says, and a challenge for a cast that might require meds for schizophrenia after each performance.

"Some of the scenes are maybe a minute or two, and I think six minutes is the longest scene," says Vaughn Pyne, who plays a fellow cabby, a crackhead, a soused New Yorker and the back-seat fornicator, among other roles. "It's bang-bang. You only have that one shot with that character to make an impact."

Or, as Ginnie Barnson -- who portrays a religious fanatic, a cougar businesswoman, an inebriated welfare recipient and finally, in the heart-rending climax, a woman catching the cab at the police station after reporting her rape -- puts it: "You've got to be in it to win it right from the beginning. Then magic happens. Even a person with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) will be mesmerized in every single scene."

Though a hint of the green-eyed acting monster surfaces good-naturedly in Gus Langley, the "Hellcab" cabby and only single-character performer -- "I gotta say, I am a little jealous that they get to flex so much," he says of his castmates -- he does relish the only role that sustains throughout the piece, giving him a character arc.

"(The cabby) starts to feel sorry for himself, almost jaded toward everything, but at the end, when he sees what this (rape victim) has been through, he sees that things for him are really not all that bad. I think the playwright has a pessimistic view, but he feels guilty about it because he wishes he were optimistic."

Onstage, his Intrepid co-star -- alas, deprived of that makeup touch-up -- at least awaits a costume fitting. Expect to see the generic Dodge tricked out as the titular hellcab, complete with taxi number, fare meter and other accoutrements of the automotive arts, as the Black Box earns its theatrical hack license tonight.

Come on, though -- the only cast member with no makeup? Give the old gal a little glam, even if it's only nail polish on the turn signals.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.