Capsule Reviews

Little Fascist Panties No, this world premiere is not an exposé of Eva Braun's kinky sex life, although playwright Bob Morgan might have been on firmer ground had he taken on the Third Reich. Instead, this grubby little shocker from dos chicas theater commune is a primer on their grunge, existential aesthetic. It starts out as an S&M Pygmalion, with serial killer and utter whack-job Mia (Anne Zimmerman) and her terribly gender-confused roommate, Lisle (played by Morgan), adopting young but accomplished streetwalker Jenna (Tanya Fazal). Oozing parental concern, they bring her into their low-rent family, but we know their smarmy attention is only pretext and that something really bad is going to happen. Perhaps that's because Mia is constantly shooting men dead on the street and stealing their money to pay bills. Maybe it's because Lisle, a rent boy for old married men from the suburbs, equally loves wearing women's lingerie and being whipped and humiliated by Mia. This happy little perverted home spins out of control -- and out of the playwright's hands -- when Mia's psychotic urgings go into overdrive after Lisle is beaten into a coma by one of his johns. Down one breadwinner, Mia knows just what to do: have Jenna hustle back onto the streets. The kid's transformed her life by now, so naturally she balks, and then all hell breaks loose -- labial rings, dark closets and a policeman's billy club called Tim take the stage. Morgan makes a splendidly conflicted Lisle -- naughty and childlike, and later, utterly fragile and heartbreaking. Anne Zimmerman, with her Susan Hayward features and whiskey contralto, relishes playing sadistic Mia. And as her torments increase, Tanya Fazal comes into her own as hapless Jenna, victim of these vipers from hell. As playwright, Morgan rushes full steam into the hopelessness of street life, using deeply scarred characters who can't escape their past to illuminate his thesis that "choices have consequences," but the X-rated melodramatic situations he concocts are more fraught with peril than a dozen installments by Charles Dickens, via Hustler. Moral: Don't make the choices these characters have. Through October 30 at Helios, 411 Westheimer, 832-283-0858.