‘Unidentified Human Remains’ challenging drama to watch

After seeing Brad Fraser’s “Unidentified Human Remains and the Nature of True Love,” which opened Thursday at the University of Maine, you can cross Edmonton, Alberta, off the list of places you might want to vacation. Evidently, Edmonton has one of the highest crime rates of all the cities in Canada, but that doesn’t even begin to describe the danger in the lives of the seven characters in this play.

You could focus on the fact that Benita is a psychic dominatrix, or that Jerri is a thirsty lesbian, or that Bernie shows up just a little too often with bloodstains on his hands. The 17-year-old Kane can’t decide if he’s gay or just disconnected — to such a point that he sometimes dreams he has worms in his scrotum. Robert, it turns out, is a worm with his sexual forays, and Candy is a plain old anorexic mess.

Actually, none of these circumstances is worth focusing on when you begin to see that this neighborhood is peopled not by a lost generation but by an empty generation. Where are the roots that cling here? In sex? drugs? harsh language? Ostensibly yes. Finally no. Finally, the only human connections in this show happen on answering machines.

The purest insight you’ll get into the spiritual decay that has settled into the hearts of these kids — even before they’ve been alive long enough to earn decay — is through David. He’s the play’s protagonist, a gay actor-turned-waiter-and-late-night-gigolo, who has enough nascent maturity to be existential about his life.

Otherwise, this episodic drama of blank verse and blank souls drinks a bit too deeply from the cliches of contemporary drama. AIDS, dysfunctional families, transexual entertainment, nudity, onstage sex and even the technical fragmentation of flashing lights and multitiered stages all come into play here. Written before the smash hit musical “Rent,” “Unidentified Human Remains” is in the same genre. That is to say, it has the feel of the TV show “Friends,” but with a full expression of the dark side that lurks behind the hip glee of the super-privileged and spiritually undernourished twentysomethingers.

Fraser is a native of Edmonton and has enjoyed success there as well as in New York. This show debuted in Chicago in 1991, and quickly moved to off-Broadway before being adapted as the feature film “Love and Human Remains” in 1995. Director Claude A. Giroux, a graduate student at UM’s School of Performing Arts, writes in program notes that this play “speaks to the conflicts which arise when people find themselves alone, misunderstood and without support promised by a supposed true world.” True enough, and “Unidentified Human Remains” ends with a warm fuzzy. But it never really has enough substance or glue to make as bold a statement as it seems to want to.

That’s no fault of Giroux’s, who has basically tapped into the rawness and rudeness of this milieu. Except for lengthy pauses and scene changes, and some unclear technical choices (this show is tech heavy with lots of light and sound cues), Giroux smacks you right in the face with this production.

The cast trips here and there in the hackneyed expressions that riddle Fraser’s script, but the actors also have many funny moments and they do make you believe in their familyness — deconstructed though it is. Andrew Lyons as David is unmistakably the star of this show. His role is stereotypically written, but Lyons never slips into stereotype. He is original, compelling, fascinating and believable. Timothy Simons as David’s busboy, Kane, is a close second — and not just for the wild and entertaining T-shirts he wears but because he portrays Kane as hyperactive and clueless, but very, very sweetly complex. You’ll come to love the relationship these two men share.

Christopher Ashmore, as the mysterious and threatening Bernie, and Kelly Sanders, as the soured Candy, carry the roles with punch. David A. Currier and Wanda Perry aren’t as intensely driven, but their onstage innocence has a certain attraction. Victoria Herrick, as Benita, has a tough role to play since she has to be just as much at home singing to her baby doll as she does getting walloped in the face by her sexual partners. Difficult as her part is to watch, Herrick handles the job admirably.

The student staff here has clearly had to work hard on this show, which is sure to be popular among the college crowd. On opening night, a packed house was more entertained than particularly fazed by the harsh violence, nudity and “adult” language. If you’re not inured to such live events, however, be forewarned. Even though there are many laugh lines, this is not an easy play to watch. And it wraps around you much like the depiction of Edmonton’s city skyline that winds its way around the periphery of the theater’s wall.

“Unidentified Human Remains and the Nature of True Love” will be performed 7:30 p.m. Nov. 8 and 2 p.m. Nov. 9 in the Al Cyrus Pavilion at the University of Maine. For tickets, call 581-1755.