It's not exactly the production from hell, but at times it certainly feels like it.

Tui Scanlan's staging of "The Devil and Billy Markham" opened last weekend at the Ong King Arts Center — an ambitious name for a warren of second-floor rooms in a still-gritty part of Chinatown.

Black rat silhouettes taped to the narrow stairway walls offer a gesture of ironic bravado, and the performance area is down a hallway and through a couple of doorways. It's an "underground" space cut directly from a B movie.

The play is a poetic one-act written by Shel Silverstein, who is better known for his children's classics "The Giving Tree" and "Where the Sidewalk Ends." Silverstein is less known as the songwriter who penned "A Boy Named Sue" for Johnny Cash.

So it's understandable that "Billy Markham" plays like a country-western lyric that won't give up. It's the story of a Nashville songwriter who rolls dice with the Devil and shoots pool with God — gambling his eternal salvation and that of the people he loves.

Scanlan stages it in a large open room, taped off into playing areas like criss-crossed airport runways. There are a couple of couches and a few chairs on the audience side of the tape, and some mats and floor pillows to invite lounging. There is a bar at one end, and drinks are available.

But opening night was a production that almost didn't happen. At 15 minutes past the 8 p.m. curtain time, my date and I were the only ones in the room. Back downstairs on the sidewalk, Scanlan assured us that an audience was expected and there would be a performance.

So we trudged back up through the rat shadows and, sure enough, by 8:25 some people had arrived and the show began.

"Billy Markham" is often done as a solo performance with music, sometimes opened and accompanied by a country music band. Megan Evans did a one-woman version at the University of Hawai'i lab theater in October 1997, with a different director staging each of its six scenes. In Scanlan's interpretation, he plays the Devil himself and shares the dialogue with a gangsta-looking chorus in baggy pants, torn fishnet stockings and satiny bustiers.

While they've obviously been disciplined, the cast is young, inexperienced and tentative at choral speaking. A few step out of the chorus and take parts. Sylvan Gaskin plays Billy, Harumi "MC Harumi the Hymn" Ueda plays God, and John Guerrero begins to develop a character in his role of Scuzzy Sleezo, Billy's manager.

Scanlan is a large, powerful presence, dominating his character but not the entire action. It would be interesting to see him in a solo performance.

Integrating the audience into the playing area gives the sensation of being involved in the action, but often splits focus into a head-turning tennis match.

The go-for-broke pacing also lacks variety, character depth and clarity. And while sitting on the floor and drinking wine from a plastic cup calls up images of 1960s coffee houses and dorm rooms, it may not play well with a wider audience.

Scanlan calls an intermission halfway into the performance. Why a one-hour, one-act play requires an intermission is not entirely clear, but it provides another opportunity to sidle up to the bar to open a fresh bottle.

Billy Markham doesn't care very much about losing or offending anyone. But Scanlan should. Ultimately, there's a line between being offhandedly hip and uncaringly unaware. Although we both like dogs, when a large friendly pup bounded into the place, jumped up on the couch and started to lick my date's face, that line was finally crossed.

Maybe there was a second half. Maybe not. It didn't seem to be important.