Bond: Both Shaken and Stirred

Cross, Simon Cross—who looks like a modern day James Bond in his white dinner jacket and terribly British accent—finds that the tables have turned in this new play at the Pacific Resident Theatre.

Arrested—as yesteryear’s Bond never was—for racing his Aston Martin down the street at 120 miles per hour after tanking up on more than a few of his “shaken not stirred” vodka martinis, Simon Cross finds himself tossed unceremoniously into the New Horizons rehab.

He’s affronted—and you can imagine Sean Connery’s or Roger Moore’s disdainful look. My god, he’s an esteemed member of Her Majesty’s Service, isn’t he?

“Why else would I be dressed like this?” he asks the staff therapist interviewing him. “You’re a maitre d’ at a steakhouse?” responds Stella (Jill Renner), the therapist.

Slumped in chairs around Cross (Satiar Pourvasei) are his fellow residents, Yvonne (Rachel Townsend), Pixie (Alondra Andrade), and Gary (Stuart W. Howard), who have all mastered beaten-down therapy center talk.

Terribly witty repartee revolves around the fact that this James Bond knockoff is far less a dashing figure than an alcoholic sex addict, compulsive gambler, adrenaline junkie who kills almost as many people as women he beds.

“I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur,” observes Judi Dench from “Goldeneye.” “A relic of the Cold War.”

And beneath our schadenfreude of watching this soaring adventurer we grew up admiring now crashing down to earth is the playwright’s less comedic examination of the misanthropy we’ve been spoon fed all these decades—glorification of violence, drunkenness, denigration of women, all of it—and how those examples have distorted our psyches and society.

Written by Gregg Ostrin and directed by Cyndy Fujikawa, “The Spy Who Went Into Rehab” plays on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through July 7th, at the Pacific Resident Theatre, 705-½ Venice Boulevard, Venice 90291; 310.822.8392.