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Louise (Meredith Patterson) comforts her husband, Theo, (Dan Castellaneta) in Steve Martin’

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UCLA alumnus and Tony Award-winning director John Rando aims to “titillate and arouse”

If director John Rando does his job, every member of the audience will leave the Geffen Playhouse performance of “The Underpants” feeling a little frisky.

The Tony Award-winning director of “Urinetown” and UCLA School of Theater alumnus outlined his goals to the gifted comedic cast of “The Underpants” on day one. “We have to titillate and arouse. (We want) the people that come to the show to be having a great time, laughing their heads off, and then go home and have really, really fun sex after the show.”

Steve Martin adapted “The Underpants,” a play originally written by German playwright Carl Sternheim, for an American audience that desires sensationalism.

“The play is sort of talking about 15 minutes of fame, where people who (are involved in scandal) come to the forefront, are looked at under a judicious eye by the public and then forgotten about,” Rando said.

The center of attention is Louise Maske, whose life heats up after her underpants fall down during a parade for the king. The situational comedy arises from her husband Theo Maske’s obliviousness. Two boarders renting rooms in the house flirt with Louise by hissing double entendres across the dinner table, right under Theo’s nose.

Good girl Louise is played by Meredith Patterson, who brings grace to her character from her musical background as Peggy Sawyer in “42nd Street” on Broadway. Patterson describes Louise’s feelings as being conflicted by this scandal.

“(Getting attention) is bad, but then I want it,” said Patterson. “It’s wrong because I’m married, but to have all these guys coming into our house is exciting. It’s pulling and tugging with my emotions.”

As Louise feels new sensations of sexual power, Theo channels his sexual energy into a neurotic personality. Actor Dan Castellaneta describes his character, Theo, as having a whirlwind of emotions – “he’s angry, he’s whining, he’s seething, he’s frightened” – all within the span of one scene.

Best known for the voice of Homer Simpson, the slim-figured Castellaneta plays Theo ironically, much as he does with Homer.

“The description of Theo was (one of) a giant, burly, blond crew cut Germanic guy. The only way I thought that I could play this was to be a guy who thinks he’s that way,” said Castellaneta.

As if the title didn’t beckon enough naughty thoughts, the set of “The Underpants” is loaded with phallic symbols. In the middle of Maske’s German bourgeois household, where the play takes place, is an old-fashioned oven Rando describes as “a big old penis that we just blatantly had there.”

The angles of the walls are slanted as if someone took the frame of the house and tipped it over 30 degrees. Rando concludes that the meaning of the architecture is expressionistic.

“It’s saying that the things going on in the house are a little wacked out. Things are a little bent.”

Rando’s affinity for laughing at life became contagious on the set during the creative process. Of Rando’s directing abilities, Castellaneta joked, “(During rehearsal) when John said, ‘Let’s do all the bad ideas,’ I (knew) I was going to love working with this guy. It made me feel free to suggest things.”