Atypical location, out-there theater

One of the most talked-about high culture spots in Las Vegas is a theater called the Onyx. It's a 96-seat room and, this being Las Vegas, it's in the back of a leather-fetish store in a shopping center.

In the front, you can buy leather chaps, leather undies and a leather French maid outfit.

In the back, theatergoers have witnessed a female "Hamlet" and "Cannibal! The Musical." This summer they'll eye a mostly nude production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

You're thinking, "Yeah, but it's in the back of a leather-fetish shop, so how serious can this theater really be?"

No, for real, it's serious.

And the Onyx, in the Commercial Center on Sahara Avenue, earned enough of a reputation as an avant-garde performance place where artists can flex less-traditional muscles that it's drawing in more professional entertainers on their off nights.

On Mondays, improv actors from "Second City" bring in less-constrained routines.

Starting Wednesday, "anti-clowns" from Cirque du Soleil and "Le Reve" stage a show called "Your New Best Friends." It's billed as a risqué, frantic evening of pathos, music, dancing and oddness that wouldn't fit as well on the Strip. (It runs Wednesday, plus May 27 and June 3.)

And Thursday through Saturday, the current run of Christopher Durang's satire "Betty's Summer Vacation" resumes.

How did this all come about?

The co-owner in charge is Mike Morse. He and his romantic partner co-own the leather shop, The Rack, as well as Hawk's Gym, a "private club and spa for men."

Two years ago, Morse wanted to do something with the space behind The Rack. He thought about turning it into a bondage-discipline sadomasochistic business of one sort or another. But he figured it would be nice to start a theater.

The first play was a "piece of" garbage titled, "The Vampire, The Virgin and the Very Horny Knight," he says.

But last year, he was approached by theater troupe director and producer John Beane to do better work, and Morse jumped at the chance.

Even now, "perverts" come into the leather store and ask lasciviously about what kind of theater they can see in the back, he says.

"I laugh at them and say, 'It's an actual theater, dude,'" Morse says.

Beane is the artistic director of Insurgo theater group, a nonprofit, and he's also the director and manager of Onyx. As such, he rewrote Aristophanes' "Lysistrata," the 25-century-old Greek comedy, for a run.

The play follows the story of women who abstain from sex to persuade men to stop warring. Beane got rid of the penis puns, added battle scenes, opera and Velvet Underground songs to create a sort of "Baz Luhrmann fugue," he says.

"That's one of the great things about the Greeks. They're dead. They can't defend themselves" from rewrites, he says.

Beane says the Onyx proves Vegas can support daring, silly and fearless avant-garde theater.

That seems to be true, says choreographer Marko Westwood, who is presenting "Speaking Bodies/Moving Words" on May 8-10. That concert is a mix of dance, spoken word and slam poetry. Westwood and his wife, Megan, will do a duet dedicated to the Paradise Pet Hospital tragedy, last month's fire that killed 16 dogs and cats.

Marko Westwood also choreographed "Cannibal!" and played a villainous lawyer in the play. But he was just a grateful fan when he watched the female "Hamlet."

"You never feel detached from the performers," he says. During the final scene in "Hamlet," "I felt like I was in the arena with them."

Jenna Wurtzberger, a dance and psychology double-major at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who'll perform in "Speaking Bodies," says it's a joy to do something different.

"They're not worried about the content of the show," she says. "They're just gonna do it. It's out of the box. It's good."

Morse says he loves good plays, but he also needs not to lose money. So Beane has been producing "more bizarre, twisted stuff (that's) socially progressive, something that's a little more in-your-face."

"If we're not way out in left field, no one shows up," Morse says. "Theater is a beautiful thing. But it's not free."

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.