Photo by Pat Padua.

The action of Washington Shakespeare Company’s Hotel Fuck begins with Champ (Gabriel Swee) miming a trombone line that sounds like one of the inter-joke musical cues on Laugh-in: “Wha-wha-wha wha-wha-WHA!” This is prelude to Champ singing, “I’m happy, you‘re happy, I’m happy, you’re happy” for the assembled all-male cast, who proceed to dance around the stage-in-the-round. This opening salvo should tell the reader at a glance whether they are meant to see the show, to avoid it, or, in the case of one critic, to weep silently at their fate as a captive audience.

And yet, I learned to look forward to these semi-musical punctuations (appropriately called “stings,” in television land). Because the Wha-wha-wha wha-wha-WHA, along with other interruptions, occured at regular intervals, stopping cold what was for the most part a series of shouted expletives, dildos of multiple sizes and colors, simulated masturbation, and a man wearing nothing but a bellboy’s cap and impromptu saran wrap briefs. “Wha-wha wha-wha-WHA” was thus transformed from absurd vaudeville gadfly to a welcome if brief oasis from the arid avant-onslaught.

The dramatic conflict of Hotel Fuck, if there is one, is the cast’s search for the elusive hotel, and the fear that they will end up at the antithesis of the hospitality they seek: The Hotel Beautiful Roses. If this sounds to you like not even pretentious crap, but sheer crap, I would not order you to turn in your dramaturg’s credentials, you philistine! But almost out of spite, ideas rise from the steaming crap: the tension between beauty and brutality, a sexuality that replaces mature intimacy with adolescent show; the power of profanity, and the diminishing returns on its overuse; and the ability of good actors to create a semblance of drama where there seems to be none.

A few of the actors make the best of the material. Swee and William Hayes. the latter of whom was recently seen in The Room Live at the AFI, take the material as seriously as they can, and Hayes has a few monologues that would not seem out of place in a Real Drama, if said drama were about the search for an elusive Hotel Fuck. But there’s only so much even a good actor can do with lines like, “I’m a big turd,” and the rest of the cast is directed to camp it up to High Heaven. I am not a fan of deliberate camp — the knowing, winking, Hey I get it’s a joke tone. But that tone has its adherents, and If you like your actors to relentlessly mug for an audience, then Capital Fringe has a show for you.

Hotel Fuck is precious and can’t help but scream its unsubtle intentions.There are relatively quiet interludes scattered throughout its 70 minute duration, but only the dedicated follower of camp will want to wait that long.

There are three remaining performances of Hotel Fuck: July 10th at 5:15 pm; July 13th at 9:15 pm; and July 16th at 8:30 pm. At Fort Fringe – The Shop, 607 New York Avenue NW. $17.