All that will be missing at the Douglas this weekend is aiming the barrel of a gun toward the theatre’s wide-open mouth. Dashing toward the closing night of its second season, the sponsoring Center Theatre Group consistently has displayed a propensity for staging bizarre productions that are taste deficient. Call them the Culver City School Board of show business. If you approve of the School Board’s antics, you will love this production from the wayward Pacifica Radio performer. The Center Theatre Group, which once may have mistaken Culver City for Greenwich Village, has shown the same kind of tone deafness practiced these nights by the School Board. Numerous of their shows have been considerably less than community-friendly. Increasingly, it appears to be the purest geographical coincidence that the Douglas’s stage is in Culver City rather than, say, Panorama City, King City, Dodge City or Kansas City. They just needed boards to stand on. Even Death Valley would have been satisfactory because mingling with the natives was not a requirement. The fumblers from the Center Theatre Group are behaving as cluelessly as lamp salesmen in a community for the blind. That Mr. Quickley’s one-man show, called “Live from the Front,” is an anti-Iraqi War rant may be the only portion of this pathetic equation that is digestible. If I may presume that he has drawn his script from the several years of commentaries I have heard on KPFK, you know what is coming. The regular people of Iraq are noble, gentle souls made in the image of God because they are not Americans. No magic-pill punchline in this one.
The Viceroy of Vulgarity
Each afternoon at drivetime, the performer presents himself to his radical radio audience as a congenitally angry societal misfit. A proud ribbon of virulent anti-Americanism threads through his daily show as he interviews extremist guests who would have to take an airflight to get back into the mainstream. That, as we say at the Passover seder, would be enough. But there is a larger problem. Several years ago, the mullahs of Pacifica Radio, tired of modest ratings numbers, decided to make a turn to the extremist left. They raised the window sashes and threw away all programming that would attract people who wear fewer than twelve earrings, eschew crayons when composing serious documents, are comprehensive in English and have a rough idea of what state Chicago is in.
A Daily Course in Coarseness
For years, KPFK and its sister stations on the Pacifica network across the country had been regarded as rag dolls for the old political lefties. They were seen as incurably crazy but harmless toys for people on the left to play with. In a huge upheaval, that belched up relatively moderate voices such as Marc Cooper and cowboy-style musical programming on Saturday mornings, the chiefs (and chiefettes) of politically correct Pacifica put out a yahoo call. When they hoisted up their nets, bottom-feeders such as Mr. Quickley tumbled onto the ground. He and other new or recycled cultural commentators employed several gimmicks to draw listeners. Coarse, vulgar rhetoric routinely underpinned most dialogueing, and only extreme social, cultural and political opinions were brooked. The unfortunate Mr. Cooper has written extensively and clearly on his website about the takeover of his station. Finally, many, possibly a majority, of the voices on KPFK possess nearly impenetrable accents. That, I presume, is a huge marketing plus in the caves of Afghanistan. If I were a baldheaded, transgendered man-woman of uncertain parentage, I would mail a supporting dollar to KPFK every day. My kind of radio.
Maybe They Never Grew Up
Such is the low level of verbal intercourse at KPFK these days that much of the programming is like overhearing a roomful of overheated high school boys and girls who accidentally stumbled into their parents’ liquor stash, and emptied it. Mr. Quickley identifies with his unquenched listeners by endorsing the stale, bitter crusts of society, men and women (or is it women and men?) who never quite have been able to reach the lever to moderate their appetites. Think of a pastime that you strongly desire and that won’t get you sent to jail, and you can make book that Mr. Quickley is against it. Recall a value that your parents taught you, and I promise there is a ninety-nine percent chance Mr. Quickley vehemently opposes it.
Just as you test the water temperature in your bathtub by dipping the big toe on your right foot, tune in to Revolutionary Radio KPFK on a weekday afternoon at 5 for a preview of Mr. Quickley. Catch his almost indecipherable bleatings. He makes a compelling case against full employment for all adult American males. He is, however, good for my hygiene. After listening to him wage rage against all non-criminals in America, especially non-blacks, you need to do something to make yourself clean again. I scrub my hands vigorously. If time allows, I shower.
Postscript
Look for me near the exit when the show at the Kirk Douglas is over. I will be the tall fellow with stacks of culturally diverse wash cloths, towels and individual soap bars — in case you have a chance to clean off before enjoying a late supper.