By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

For its annual world premiere, Playhouse in the Park goes for a thrill ride. Hiding Behind Comets by Brian Dykstra is a roller coaster ride in the dark - more adrenalin rush than art.

It's the production that's great, not the play, which will probably get a lot further than it deserves in the world, replete as it is with heaving sexual desire and blood-splattering violence (to say nothing of graphic language), even though it pretty much doesn't make sense.

Chances are audiences will be so titillated by the way this production digs into Comets' dirty little secrets and tickles their inner voyeur that they won't care.

It's 1 a.m. in a crummy bar in a nowhere town (and set designer Kevin Rigdon telegraphs its misspent and uncared for history to you in one of the best designs on a stage this season).

Troy (Christian Conn) is tending bar. His bad-girl twin sister, Honey (Jacqueline van Biene), is trying to tease him into sneaking off for sex with his sweetly slutty girlfriend Erin (Erica Schroeder) and has enough brain cells left over to play some mind games with a very strange stranger (Dan Moran).

Troy complies, and it turns out Honey is so eager because they're so attuned that she has as much fun as he does without even being there.

She and bullet-headed weirdo Cole (in a big, psycho performance from Moran) have a desultory conversation into which he casually drops the word "adopted." Completely out of character, Honey freaks. Ka-boom! Was that a clue that just dropped?

Dykstra should write an effusive thank you note to the Playhouse and director Michael Haney who make the writer's Olympian jumps in logic, his dull-thud insertion of plot points, his slick-sounding but less than believeable dialogue (endless sly questions) into topnotch entertainment.

Dykstra uses the mass murder/suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, a zillion years ago as the heart of his mystery. Give a special bravo to the design team for covering a long, standard-issue crazy guy monologue with a powerful video of the aftermath to help pass the time - unfortunately something beyond the sight lines of some of the audience.

Somewhere in the second act, Comets' legs fall out from under it, as Dykstra attempts to rationalize his plot into something more important than it is.

It doesn't much matter. Haney mixes performances, design and script into something highly combustible, carefully setting off a series of orchestrated theatrical explosions.

The performances are wonderful. Moran has a good time exploring the confines of a narrow character, and Conn's normalcy is pleasing. Schroeder defines the boredom of a small town, and van Biene is also big, big, big - although Honey's poor grammar didn't seem natural coming out of van Biene. They're all superbly costumed in low-rent duds by Gordon DeVinney.

Comets is a terrific acting exercise and great fun, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I couldn't help wondering why, as the danger builds, everybody is equipped with guns, a knife, even a baseball bat - but no cell phone to dial 911.

Hiding Behind Comets continues through April 18 at Playhouse in the Park Shelterhouse; 421-3888.

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com