Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

"Big Thick Rod," a play written by Stanton Wood, directed by Edward Elefterion and being performed at the New York City International Fringe Festival, begins, not surprisingly, as a sex farce. Then it turns into… a commentary on capitalism“ Contemporary politics? Exploitation? The war between the sexes? Actually, there are aspects of all these here, and, at 90 minutes long, "Big Thick Rod" has too many disparate elements all in one play.

Cricket (Tatiana Gomberg) is a wood nymph (o) who has been taken from her home in the woods by Elmer (Arthur Aulisi). They marry, and for the duration of their three-week honeymoon, have wild and wanton sex until the honeymoon is literally over. Elmer is trying to make partner in his law firm, and does not have time to screw the requisite amount of times to satisfy Cricket (8 times a day.) He suggests she read War and Peace, and join a book club, like all the other wives in the firm; Cricket balks, and asks if she can hire a gardener to help her tend her bush. Elmer acquiesces, gives her a checkbook and an allowance, and in comes Jerome (Dan Ajl Kitrosser), a sad-faced, sweet fellow who eventually becomes besotted with Cricket, but cannot fulfill her sexual needs. He begs to be released from the binding contract he has signed (which Cricket has learned about from the business books in Elmer's study where he locks her when she demands sex.) To supplement Jerome, she hires Big Thick Rod (Matt W. Cody), who works as a woodsman for the Burgermeister (Emily Hartford), who may very well be a hermaphrodite with a mean bullwhip.

All's well until Elmer notices her spending habits, which then must be curbed. So Cricket pimps out Big Thick Rod to gospel choirs and Japanese tour groups, and here's where the play begins to go awry. For a start, there is no good reason why Cricket would fall in love with her captor, as Elmer is a drip, and becomes more and more drippy as the play goes on (blow up doll notwithstanding.) And, there's no good reason why, after more sex than he has ever had in his life, and rapturous sex at that, Elmer would call a halt to it all. Wouldn't he, a buttoned-up repressed lawyer, become liberated, and thank his lucky stars? Though I totally buy suspending disbelief in a sex farce, halfway through "Big Thick Rod," the fun starts giving way to a morality play about exploitation, diffusing the play's meaning into something rather obvious. It shifts from being about Cricket's emancipation, both sexually and financially, to being about the coldness of Capitalism with a big C. That's too bad, because Wood has some truly funny lines: "You make Caligula look like Mr. Rogers!" Elmer says to Cricket, and some of his observations about the world in which we live are right on the money. "Big Thick Rod" also boasts a cracker of a cast, and director Elefterion gets the best out of all of them. Cricket is by far the most interesting character in the play, and in the end, she chooses to be with Jerome, the sweet guy, whom she will exploit as a circus sideshow, and her sexual needs fall, mysteriously, by the wayside. Can't a nymph (o) get a better ending?