Thaddeus Phillips' 'Barry Seal' at FringeArts is a dotty documentary

A work of bizarro genius, The Incredibly Dangerous Astonishing Lucrative and Potentially True Adventures of Barry Seal, at FringeArts only through Saturday, is not to be missed. Thaddeus Phillips gives us a brilliant, hilarious theater installation/conspiracy theory/telenovela/true-life drama about the titular drug smuggler and CIA informant.

If you look up Barry Seal, you'll discover that not only was he a real person, but also that there are conflicting theories about his death. Was he assassinated in his native Louisiana in 1986 by Colombia's Medellín drug cartel after he helped the CIA with a drug sting against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua? Or by the CIA, then knee-deep in the Iran-Contra scandal?

None of this is the point of Phillips' play. Rather, the point is the wild and adventurous life, not the death, of this wheeler-dealer who recites Goodnight Moon to his kids on the phone. As Phillips plays him, Seal may be the most endearing drug smuggler/CIA informant you've ever met.

Decked out in aviator sunglasses and a sleazy suit, Seal has been sentenced to six months of community service for money-laundering and drug smuggling and stuck in a Salvation Army dorm in Baton Rouge. He shares a room with a pathetic guy (played by Mario Cotto, who also DJs the show's soundscape) who is a Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist and who lives in his bathrobe and high-top sneakers.

Seal is puzzled by this punishment, because "the last 10,000 pounds of cocaine I brought into the middle district of Louisiana, I did it without leaving the house."

Phones are a big feature of Seal's life and of the show: a payphone on the corner, a $22-per-minute satellite phone Seal uses to order pizza, a wall phone in the lobby of the Salvation Army, an emergency red dial phone inside a box marked DEA.

This is a guy who has both Vice President George H.W. Bush's phone number and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega's. The conversations are the script.

The FringeArts stage is bare except for a central rig with a high platform, serving as the dorm room (wait until you see the conversion to beds - another of those terrific, simple inventions that makes you grin with the sheer pleasure of being in a theater.) Jeff Becker designed the clever set, which includes pieces of a Cadillac Fleetwood.

The prequel to this show was probably Phillips' 2010 El Conquistador!, also based on South American telenovelas. The sequel to this work will be his big Fringe show in the fall called Alias Ellis MacKenzie, because, in true telenovela style, the story continues.

I can't wait.

The Incredibly Dangerous Astonishing Lucrative and Potentially Completely True Adventures of Barry Seal

Through May 16 at FringeArts, 140 N. Columbus Blvd.

Tickets $25.

Information: 215-413-1318 or www.fringearts.com

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