‘Alagazam’s’ demented cast spins a raucous carnival

Unbridled flimflam energizes “Alagazam,” freaking out in the late-night slot at the Actors’ Gang. Director Brent Hinkley and a demented cast devour Adam Simon and Tim Robbins’ tent-show vaudeville with fearless perversity.

Reworking the authors’ 1985 “Slick Slack Griff Graff,” “Alagazam” wraps carnival circuitry around a symbolist post-World War II America. Conflating Tod Browning’s “Freaks” with elements of National Lampoon, Grand Guignol and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, it takes aim at the agitprop jugular.

Richard Hoover’s sideshow setting and music director David Robbins’ crack “Anarchestra” supply snake-oily atmosphere for the opening attraction: fiery-fingered balladeer Johnny Storm (Cameron Dye). A reversed viewpoint shifts us backstage, zeroing in on Johnny’s fellow “prodigies, oddities and oh-my-Goddities.”

That description comes from Cyrus T. Grifter (the superb V.J. Foster). He, along with quack Milton Callabus Cork (Steven M. Porter), carries the jingoistic banner until losing the curiosities to commercial television’s nuclear sway.

This arrives via the Ramsens (Ned Bellamy and Lolly Ward as John Cameron Swayze and Dorothy Kilgallen on LSD). The immoral imperative subsequently implodes, like a self-swallowing sword.

The designs are ripe, notably Rebecca Herron’s costumes, and the actors display unholy abandon. Favorites will vary; at the opening, Andrew Wheeler, Angela Berliner and Gary Kelley wriggled off with the house.

The grotesquerie and social relevance achieve symbiosis only intermittently, the energy slackening when the issues elbow out the curdled humor. Still, if there is anything else currently playing quite like “Alagazam,” I’ll eat a live chicken.

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‘Alagazam’

Where: Actors’ Gang, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood

When: Fridays-Saturdays, 10 p.m.

Ends: Dec. 21

Price: $12

Contact: (323) 465-0566, Ext. 15

Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes