Cowboy Mouth

by Toby Zinman

A "rock 'n' roll Jesus with a cowboy mouth." That's what Patti Smith, now a legendary singer, wanted Sam Shepard, now a legendary playwright, to be. Or so we hear in the play they wrote together during a bad moment in London in 1971. Cowboy Mouth is a one-act written before Shepard wrote the great plays that made his reputation, and this production at the Shubin reveals it to be more archival than theatrical, a self-portrait of two crazy people living in a messy, loud, artistically interesting time.

Cavale (her name, she tells us, means "escape") has "kidnapped" Slim. She fondles a dead crow. He smashes at the drum set. They tell each other stories. They sing. They taunt. The place is a mess -- covered with clothes, towels, beer bottles, empty pretzel bags, pillows, shoes -- "a ragpile, dogshit situation." True enough. In the midst of it all, they order in some "lobster with drawn butter," and the Lobsterman (Kenny Opdenaker) delivers: He shows up at the door in full lobster suit, to become their savior.

Cavale is haunted by the poet Nerval and for her, music is a belief system, a replacement for traditional religion; she wants Slim -- or somebody -- to do what Dylan almost did, what Jagger almost did: to become the new god. Slim is haunted by the wife and baby he left and his belief in his own inadequacy. (It is the stuff of biography as well as fan cult that Shepard always wanted to be a rock drummer.)

Both Ray Germann as Slim and Joy Orlemann as Cavale have the look of their famous characters and they do a creditable job of bringing a play to life that is way past its day. What they don't have is the genuine, riveting, terrifying intensity: They are acting, and so there is something vaguely uncomfortable in the performances, as though they're afraid of going too far or of slipping on the stuff underfoot. Tom Teti directed, and he confesses in the program notes that he "never really Œgot' Sam Shepard." It shows. The play should be far funnier and far more dangerous than it is here.

This was originally a 2002 Fringe production that was canceled when L&I shut down its venue, so I am glad it found a home belatedly.

Through Feb. 16, Shubin Theatre, 407 Bainbridge St., 610-489-9713