Hooked:  From Outcall to Answering the Call — My Journey From Hooker to Healer

Reviewed by Bill Raden

It takes a lot of courage to walk out on a stage and perform anything, much less an autobiographical piece that delves into the most personal and revealing aspects of one’s life. To the credit of monologist Bailey Mason, her 70-minute self-portrait, tracing her double life as an aspiring standup comedian and outcall sex-worker is nothing if not fearless.

Kicking off with a reenactment of her own 1998 standup routine in which she riffs on death, religion and healthcare — the three themes that recur as leitmotifs during the evening — Mason proceeds to describe being sexually abused between the ages of 12 to 18, which eventually led to the epiphany of using sex to pay the bills as she pursued her dream of studying acting.

What follows is a sometimes frustratingly soft-focused and under-detailed account of her rocky spiritual journey, from an emotionally empty marriage that ended tragically, to her eventual acceptance of her own lesbian sexual orientation, to finally finding emotional fulfillment with her wife Jackie, and spiritual completion as a licensed faith healer Practitioner in the Church of Religious Science.

Director Mark W. Travis’ spare staging recreates the brisk pace and intimacy of a standup comedy act, which proves well suited to Mason’s brand of self-deprecating and frank humor. But while the performer is refreshingly devoid of self-pity or preachy moralizing about a life regularly touched by death, illness and eccentric or less-than-flattering behavior on her part (“Let’s face it, I’m a weird duck,” she quips), Hooked has a tendency to retreat behind glossy generalizations when only specifics will deliver the show’s intended visceral punch.  In any kind of writing the universal is always found in the telling detail; without it, Mason never quite manages to preach beyond the choir.

Spiritworks Center, 260 N. Pass Ave., Burbank; Sun., 7 p.m., through June 29. (818) 623-7408, www.hookedagain.net.