‘Delos’ Embarks on Awkward Journey

Despite the title “Delos (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Plague),” anyone hoping for a hysterical, Kubrick-esque AIDS satire will be horribly disappointed. This show at Highways has intriguing characters and plotting but fails utterly in its execution.

David Arthur Stanley’s play is about a group of gay men living in Silver Lake who travel to the Greek island of Delos to spread the ashes of Jonathan, a rather nasty former friend who has recently succumbed to AIDS. Delos is a gay orgy paradise far off the path of the safe-sex crusades and has that European spirit of naturalism mixed with ancient Grecian paganism.

And yet despite the assorted neurotic characters (a lustful man in mourning who has a martyr complex and thus can only love soon-to-die AIDS victims; a repressed good boy whose midlife crisis turns him into a promiscuous slut; and the AIDS activist who only pretends to be HIV-positive), bared buns and dangling appendages, rippling muscles and suggestive situations, this dark sex comedy is incredibly boring.

Stanley’s script meanders between mini-messages and trite observations, feeling more like aimless chitchat than a play. We never get a sense of the mean-spirited Jonathan or the liberated lustfulness of the sun-stroked isle. Johanna Siegmann’s direction perversely makes the minimalistic staging cumbersome and the nudity prudish and awkward.

* “Delos (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Plague),” Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. Thursday-Sunday, 8:30 p.m. Ends Sunday. $15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours.