There’s no mystery to supply suspense in Matthew Posey’s messy new musical, Mean, a highly fictionalized, metaphysical account of how Charles Manson, Charles ‘Tex’ Watson, and Lynnette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme, now integral characters in the annals of American crime, met. Reading the synopsis, a musical comedy about a murderous cult leader might seem like another one of Posey’s weird trips. But despite the production’s more outlandish elements, it’s more of an exercise in entirely normal psychological curiosity.

Posey gives us a paean to the inexplicable capability of humans for violence and cruelty— how some people are born and bred for meanness, how some stumble into it and decide it suits them fine, how some need others to draw the devil out— but when the outcome of an event is known, the journey becomes of the utmost importance. We want a front row seat for how these people came to be who they are. What we get is a dark, well-choreographed circus that affords no new understanding.

Charlie Manson (Mitchell Parack), a regular at a roadside bar in Twentynine Palms, California, can’t seem to get any respect. He’s a loser, a deadbeat, sullen and a little sleazy. A storm’s brewing, and several oddballs stumble into the bar in order to get off the road. Two of these people happen to be Charles Watson (Matthew Posey), a recently released prisoner, and Lynnette Fromme (Anastasia Munoz), a runaway. And if circumstance wasn’t enough to throw them together, there’s a confusing jumble of side characters billed as manifestations of good and, piled on to add heft to the what-if scenario.

Setting the whole thing to original music by the supremely talented Justin Locklear was a stroke of Posey’s usual genius, a creepy reminder of the real Manson’s affinity for song and the role “Helter Skelter” by the Beatles would later play in Manson’s plans. The problem is that when it comes to truly rotten human beings, reality is often stranger and more chilling than even the most bizarre fictions.

Thus, our desire to revel in the minds of the morally warped, tasting the freedom to give in to our latent homicidal fantasies is dulled by the appearance of characters like Amarillo Dog Eyes, an old, dying Cherokee Indian who runs around blessing drinks and interpreting dreams. Too many extraneous characters (who sing well and make us laugh) distract us from developing a bond with the three who are most important. We’re up close and personal in the small Ochre House theater, but Mean lacks an essential intimacy. You won’t feel any different about Manson after seeing this, because the musical is content to skim the surface of our longings rather than delving deep.

What works are the moments of quiet affinity between Manson and Fromme (and Tex, too, somewhat). It is somehow less disturbing to see Tex pistol whip the bartender than it is to see Fromme and Manson cozying up, a sexy, strange style of foreplay to everything that’ll come next. Parack, whether he’s singing his character’s whacked out “17 Angels” into an echoey mic, is so creepy that it’s difficult to look at him for too long. With his longish, frizzy hair and wild eyes, he’s Manson— unpredictable, volatile, but rendered oddly impotent in the way he’s relegated to the side in favor of showcasing Tex. Munoz is excellent as the ethereal enabler (though her singing voice leaves almost everything to be desired), but Manson’s transformation from lonely loser to charismatic leader feels undeserved because he never actually says or does much. Tex is a more straightforward villain than Manson, and perhaps even in some ways more deadly. But as we’ve realized, or at least, one hopes we have, ideas are more dangerous than guns and much less predictable. It’s a shame that the physical violence is given more focus than the meeting of compatible and compassionate minds.

Posey has certainly found poetry and inspiration in the haphazard, but gives too little credence to Manson’s machinations and too little credit to the real-life alchemy that brought Squeaky, Tex, and Charlie together (and that the talented actors make alarmingly palpable in the few opportunities they’re given). To paraphrase Tex in one of his less prosaic bits of dialogue, meanness, like poetry, doesn’t have to rhyme, or make sense.

Symmetry in poetry boring, so a poet might spice things up a bit with a mistake. Only the mistakes aren’t really mistakes, because the ones who know what they’re doing commit these flaws on purpose. With Mean, Posey willfully keeps us off balance, and it’s a perversely enjoyable ride. But the more madcap elements act as a smokescreen, distancing us from the emotional core, keeping the show from forcing the kind of empathy that might make us reexamine this familiar evil.

Photo: Josh Jordan