Could the Church of Scientology be the best show on Broadway?

Every day, swarms of fanny-packed tourists wander New York's Times Square in search of the elusive theatrical bargain. Some of them wind up with partially obstructed views of Mamma Mia; others go for the discount nosebleed section at Stepping Out. Inevitably, they will all come to ask themselves the same question: Why has God forsaken me?

With just four hours, $30, and lives lacking in meaning, we're ready to immerse ourselves in the razzle-dazzlingest religion of them allOne's entertainment dollar doesn't go quite so far as it used to on the Great White Way, even if you shell out $100 or more for full-price tickets. Let's face it, even Wicked is a disappointment, no matter how long your fellow audience members might stand for the obligatory ovation. But we're going to let you in on a little secret: The best show on Broadway is absolutely free, and it's never sold out. It's called the Church of Scientology.

As befits a religion with so much star power, Scientology's acolytes have turned proselytizing into a performance art. And with its neoclassical columns and glass-and-marble facade, the Church's Times Square headquarters is a gleaming monument to the magic of theater. You'll probably love the production so much that you'll want to donate the suggested $30 for must-have souvenirs when it's over, but there's no pressure.

On assignment for Radar, I embarked on a scouting expedition to the center with my friend Brian, an illustrator. In an entertainment district boasting not only Altar Boys and Jersey Boys but also Naked Boys Singing, we have serious doubts about a show without boys in the title. But we keep a positive attitude. With just four hours, $30, and, as we soon learn, lives lacking in meaning, value, and basically anything at all except animalistic selfishness, we're ready to immerse ourselves in the razzle-dazzlingest religion of them all.

You deck yourself out for a night at the opera. You doll yourself up for a big dinner date. And when visiting the Scientology center, you dress like someone with a void to fill—an abiding sadness that metastasizes with each night spent alone, watching TV, dropping Chinese food on yourself, trolling the Internet for free porn, and wishing for something, anything to fill the vast, whistling emptiness. I choose a Gap polo shirt tucked into khakis. Brian wears a Philadelphia Eagles cap and cargo shorts.

We walk in and meet Jimmy, a plainspoken New York City native who will be our leering Alan Cumming emcee in the cabaret of weirdness that follows. He isn't at all like you'd expect. But that you'd expect anything in the first place is, in Jimmy's opinion, a pain in the ass.

"A lot of people who come in here off the street are your know-it-all phony intellectuals," he says, pegging me without even trying. "They don't come in with open minds."

Jimmy is likable. He wears a button-down tucked loosely into Dockers and talks with the wiry intensity of Midnight Cowboy's Ratso Rizzo. He tells us how Scientology has helped him deal with his girlfriend's constant chatter. His expression for a large amount of something is "pantsload," as in, "Hubbard got his start writing detective stories and such, and I'll tell you, he made a pantsload of cash."

Jimmy leads us to the Spartan screening room where we watch a 15-minute video introduction to Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, L. Ron Hubbard's unifying theory of the human mind and an unparalleled masterwork of yanked-from-the-ass lingo. Hubbard uses jargon like David Mamet uses curse words, only instead of bull sessions between losers at a pawn shop, he crafted a system for losers to base their lives around. Some religions require a big leap of faith, Scientology asks for lots of small leaps to the glossary.

Abandoned by Jimmy in a darkened room (after he informs us that what we're about to see is "a little dramatic" and we'll have to "suspend our disbelief"), Brian and I absorb the mellow aperitif that is the Dianetics primer reel. First, we learn that the mind comes in two parts: analytical and reactive. Then, in well-produced vignettes starring tomorrow's Travoltas and Cruises, we witness nice people suffering awful traumas (car wrecks, illness, getting beaned with a baseball). We're informed that even when they're not fully conscious (while they're being loaded into an ambulance, say) their reactive mind™ dumps every ambient scent, sound and image into deep storage.

At one point, an accident victim is out cold while an EMT talks to another about breaking up with his girlfriend.

"You know, I just didn't want to find out later that I'm stuck in a long-term relationship," he says.

Later, the same victim has recovered and is driving with his own girlfriend. The car skids and sense memories of the accident come flooding back, including what he overheard about the EMT's dating woes. Suddenly the victim associates his girlfriend with the grisly aftermath of an auto collision. This gets him thinking.

"I just don't want to find out later that I'm stuck in a long-term relationship," he tells the baffled girl.

Have you seen the David Cronenberg movie where people want to have sex with car crash wounds? This scene is kind of like that, if the film were to be re-imagined by the producers of Yes, Dear. After taking it in, I'm not entirely convinced that these painful sense memories called engrams™ are the root cause of all human misery. But it's definitely clear that break-ups would be easier if you could say, "It's not you, it's that you remind me of twisted, gore-draped steel and the scent of blood dripping into a flaming gas puddle. We should still hang out, though."