BLACK LEATHER at the Unknown Theatre.

It blazes like a shining beacon of snowy whiteness in the dark, guiding wise men to its vicinity and keeping them enthralled by its glowing convex orbs for the entire holiday season! No, silly, I am not talking about the Christmas Star of Bethlehem – I’m talking about playwright Michael Sargent’s pasty naked bottom, which is on near omnipresent display in his latest opus of excess and debauch. The bottom in question may not be the Star of the Nativity, but it is sure the salient feature in Sargent’s plays, which are, frankly, as known for their frequent sightings of naked flesh as Pinter plays are known for pauses. And, while “Black Leather” is not overly rigorously plotted -- and occasionally seems to bear the imprimatur of having been written with haste -- the piece is as strikingly ferocious and morally ambivalent as to be almost archetypal “Sargent.” I suppose the play could best be called a sort of Manhattan Art World Roman A Clef, centering on the notorious life of hardcore photographer Robert “Krapplethorpe,” who’s known for taking lurid photos of his naked tricks performing sado masochistic sex with him. The play opens with Krapplethorpe (Sargent) hilariously tearing apart a business meeting involving his sugar daddy (Jan Munroe) and the hag art gallery director (Kathy Bell Denton) who wants to exhibit Krapplethorpe’s photos – but wishes he’d give her more of the shots of avocados and fewer of the ones of whips going into anuses. Yet, the play’s focus crystallizes during scene two, when Krapplethorpe ditches his sugar daddy to bring home a hot trick (Kevin Daniels) from the Mineshaft, who then proceeds to rigorously roger Krapplethorpe’s rump. Then, as both men snort cocaine and booze it up in the post-coital glow, Krapplethorpe orders the trick to head to a rival’s house and chop off his head. The rest of the play centers on Krapplethorpe’s subsequent terror (upon regaining his senses) that the trick has actually done such a reprehensible thing. Director Chris Covics’ staging intentionally skirts any attempts to depict the sleazy characters sentimentally – they exist in an atmosphere of moral vacuity, orbiting around nothing at all – but there’s also something unusually believable about them. Sargent’s Krapplethorpe is an appetite-driven, spoiled child, whose behavior reflects an entitled, inwardly vacant person that has managed to get away with everything his entire life. The show’s nudity is, of course, blatant and exploitative – but it’s also oddly germane to a story that suggests the human body is a ridiculous object and that recreational sex is itself a bestial, vaguely porcine function. You’ll want to see this show on a night when the actors have all had showers before going on, though.