STAGE WEST: "Merry Me" at Diversionary Theatre

Michael Amira Temple in "Merry Me."                                                              Photo by Talon Reed Cooper

            From the very first moments of “Merry Me,” when its beguiling narrator (Michael Amira Temple) introduces the characters, it’s clear that everyone involved knows that they’re putting on a show and that its interludes of commentary aside, it shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
            That’s the attitude audiences should adopt with this Hansol Jung romp, now onstage at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights.
            Though it’s been referred to, and often advertised in the two years it’s been around, as a “lesbian sex comedy,” that’s pretty reductive. It’s true Jung is anything but subtle with the one-act play’s foreplay, fiveplay and sixplay, but her “Merry Me” script is informed by a slew of literary, historical and pop-culture references.
            For starters, just as Restoration playwright William Wycherley’s “The Country Wife” imagined a man, Harry Horner, who feigned impotence in order to have sex with married women, Jung’s lesbian Lt. Shane Horne (Winnie Beasley) enlists the help of her psychiatrist (Andrea Agosto) in letting everyone at the wartime island Navy base on which they’re stationed believe that she has undergone conversion therapy. This as a means of getting her “merries” – the play’s code word for orgasms.
            Jung has also borrowed from Greek mythology, assigning supporting characters on the basecamp thusly: commanding officer Gen. Aga Memnon (Troy Tinker-Elliot), his wife Clytemnestra Memnon (Jacquelyn Ritz), their son Willy Memnon (Coleman Ray Clark) and his wife Sappho Memnon (Mak Shealy).
            That’s not all. Horne uses a volume of Shakespeare in an attempt to, well, get off. The omniscient narrator turns into The Angel from Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” Even the Marvel “Avengers” movies find their way into the storytelling.
            Full disclosure: I knew about all of these references before I saw “Merry Me” on opening night at Diversionary, but you know what? The Kushner Angel aside, I was never thinking about the Greek mythology nods and very little of the other Easter eggs.
            Maybe the script’s too clever for its own good; as a very sexy, pretty graphic 90-minute farce where practically anything goes, “Merry Me” doesn’t need Greek mythology or The Bard at all.
            Director Vanessa Stalling lets her actors play, and do they ever. They’re all going full throttle most of the time, though only Clark’s nerdy (glasses – dead giveaway!) Willy Memnon comes off like a cartoon character. Tinker-Elliot’s general is close, but he has less to do.
            There are interweaving narratives in the midst of all the physical comedy – there’s a war going on; the basecamp is blacked out; Shane can’t keep up her ruse after she meets Sappho in drag, which leaves Willy and Mrs. Memnon (who had a thing with Shane) in both turmoil and frustration; meanwhile, shrink Jess O’Nope has been merried (47 times we’re told) by the Angel and is afterward given the task of wiping out “half the population” with an ax. That would be the “cis-gendered male species of European descent.” Uh, starting with axing Willy Memnon.
            The talented Agosto manages to make this complication seem somehow grounded in reality. Hers is the most human portrayal in the show.
            But it’s Temple who gets the last bow afterward, and for excellent reason. She’s not only the heart of “Merry Me” but owns every scene she’s in, and that’s most of the play. It’s a nuanced performance that is the height of fun to watch.
            It’s easy to get lost in the “Merry Me” tale, but I don’t know that it matters. Certainly the play has some weightier points to make, though they’re swamped by the madcap goings-on.
            This production to some extent brings to mind Diversionary’s zany “TL;DR: Thelma Louise; Dyke Remix” from last year, at least in spirit. “Merry Me” is a more satisfying show and more creative.
            “Merry Me” runs through June 8 at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights.
            • Important coda: In a story I did last year for the San Diego Union-Tribune about then-newly installed Diversionary Artistic Director Sherri Eden Barber, I wrote that Barber was the theater’s first female artistic director. She is not. Gail Feldman was the first. I apologize to her for the error.