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Previews: 02/10/2009- Close: 03/15/2009
That Pretty, Pretty or The Rape Play Reviewed for TheaterOnline.com By: Jason Clark
Easily the most audacious play to hit off-Broadway since Sarah Kane’s Blasted singed its way through Soho last fall (though not as revelatory a production), Sheila Callaghan’s That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play aims to break you down as a viewer, to constantly challenge your notions of taste, and what your limits are and can ultimately become. This, of course, will not be palatable to certain viewers, especially those with squeamish sensibilities, but for those with a more adventurous sense, it’s a jolting tonic to the blahs that seem to have settled off-Broadway these days. This is not a show for Grandma, and now that I think of it, not really for Ma either. An unwieldy amalgum of the styles of Charles Mee and possibly Christopher Durang, with maybe a touch of Adam Rapp’s fondness for bodily fluids and rock music, the frenetic style of Kip Fagan’s production announces itself early on with a bludgeon: a pair of tarty females (Lisa Joyce and Danielle Slavick) burst into a hotel room to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” while two hootin’ and hollerin’ guys (Greg Keller and Joseph Gomez) sing along, karaoke-style. The two women have an ulterior motive, however, to kill the men and add fodder to their renegade blog, and after offing one of them (with a proposed “deuce in the mouth” by one of them), they try to devise ways to rep themselves in cyber land. And when they get stuck, Jane Fonda (Annie McNamara, in a circa 80s fitness queen wig and leotard) offers helpful hints and guidance. And this is only the start to the play’s burrito-like wrapping around of events. Soon after, we see the same scene as the first, only with the two men spouting the dialogue (a truly neat twist, as it proves more unsettling to hear the salty language and witness the brusque violence as performed by males), and wormhole-like unfolding of later scenes, like a bizarre dinner party that Richard Maxwell might have embraced (complete with smoothie-like soup and lettuce as an entrée), then to the same hotel room as one of the men lays out the groundwork for a screenplay, wits characters much like the two women we’ve seen, and after the gallows humor and avant garde twists, Callaghan’s work eventually becomes a Tinseltown satire as well, with a particularly ingenious use of the THX sound logo and, through Narelle Sissons’ inventive scenic design, the illusion of seeing of the movie teased earlier in the play. This is heady, crazy stuff, and it is true that Callaghan might have bitten off more than she can chew here. The scenes vary in scope, and the dialogue doesn’t always land, but it continually seems to fire off in distinctive places. The utter sense of irreverence to women’s rights and how they are portrayed in media will not be welcome to many who may think Callaghan is no better than a Neil LaBute or a David Mamet, who often use women as pawns to highlight male angst. But their work is serious, something this play never purports to be. (Sample exchange: “You kiss your mother with that mouth“ Only on her beef curtains!”) The cast does quite well at straddling the difficult line between exaggeration and restraint, but special mention must be made of Joyce’s standout comic prowess. A superb downtown actress, with huge, expressive eyes and a never-ending originality in the cadence of a simple line, she has just the right sense of the outsized to put this material forth, and isn’t afraid to (literally) dive right in. That Pretty Pretty is nearly impossible to sum up in a tidy description, which is precisely what makes it so intriguing. Sometimes its intent even seem to be floating in the ethos somewhere as well, as it’s juggling a myriad of batty notions, but it’s hard to shake all the same. Here’s a case where going too far is, indeed, just far enough. Venue: Rattlestick Theatre : 224 Waverly Place |
