John Ferreira and Steven Satyricon in Impact Theatre's The Play About the Naked Guy

PHOTO BY CHESHIRE ISAACS

The jolt, incidentally, comes courtesy of his new producing partners, the box office geniuses behind such gay flesh outings as Naked Boys Running Around Naked and I Am My Own Whore. With financial problems of their own, the crafty Eddie (John Ferreira) and his pair of preening club-boy sycophants, T. Scott (Adrian Anchondo) and Edonis (Timitio Artusio), have moved into Integrity's little turf to, as Dan puts it, "Fuck art right up the ass." In tow is their box-office bait, porn star Kit Swagger (a swaggering Steven Satyricon), titular titillator for Eddie's latest extravaganza, an (even more) homoerotic staging of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

Impact Theatre, which premieres The Play About the Naked Guy in its aptly seedy basement theater beneath a Berkeley pizza parlor, has a proven way with this kind of material. Directed with anarchic élan and requisite comical definition by Evren Odcikin, Naked Guy turns ably on stripper poles as well as a nicely off-the-shelf but just-true-enough clash between artistic truth and lowest-denominator mass entertainment. The real draw is in the camp, however, played to the hilt, and compellingly enough that it's easy to echo Dan's wife and mother-in-law in their rapt engagement with the trashy side: "This is fun! I wanna be gay too!"

"We all do, dear."

PALOMINO

Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m.;

Tues., 7 p.m.; through Dec. 5; $10–$55

Aurora Theatre

2081 Addison, Berk.

(510) 843-4822

www.auroratheatre.org

THE PLAY ABOUT THE NAKED GUY

Thurs.–Sat., 8pm (no show Nov. 25); through Dec. 11; $10–$20

La Val's Subterranean

1304 Euclid, Berk.

(800) 838-3006

www.brownpapertickets.com