The Amoralists have become New York’s latest It company on the strength of two explosive shows — last year’s “The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side” and this spring’s “Happy in the Poorhouse.” The enterprising troupe is now bringing back “Amerissiah,” a play it first presented off-off-Broadway in 2008.
Written and directed, like the other shows, by Derek Ahonen, “Amerissiah” displays the Amoralists’ trademarks: characters eking out a living on America’s fringes, outré dysfunctions, extreme physicality, foul-mouthed humor. On Theatre 80’s very wide stage, it all looks like an indie-style domestic-warfare movie shot in lush Cinemascope.
But Ahonen’s work is more than low-brow provocation wrapped in white-trash aesthetics. He has affection for all his characters, including the Ricewater family of “Amerissiah.”
Facing divorce, unresolved childhood traumas, looming jail time and a son, Barry (Matthew Pilieci) — who refuses to fight his cancer because he thinks he’s God — the Ricewaters respond with bickering and shoving, seasoned with a lot of yelling. Not even Barry’s mellow, pot-smoking wife Margie (Aysha Quinn) can calm them down.
Not much actually happens, but Ahonen’s high-velocity writing covers up the void. He has a gift for eyebrow-rising non sequiturs — “This will be as easy as making soup,” “You’re bookending a life with not enough books” — that his cast delivers as if they were pearls of wisdom. This generates plenty of laughs, as do the over-the-top situations and characters: an uptight used-car dealer (Sarah Lemp), a religious attorney (James Kautz, looking like Sean Penn in “Carlito’s Way”) and especially a white hip-hop fan in a do-rag (Nick Lawson),who steals the second act.
Interestingly, that act is also when sentiment and tears cut through the garishness. “Amerissiah” takes another 180-degree turn in tone at the end, concluding on a dreamy note that suggests the Amoralists have more than one trick in their bag.