It is difficult to write about this unique play. The production ending Geva Theater Center’s impressive 40th season [13th in the 180-seat Nextstage, where this two-character S&M exercise is playing) is actually the Southern Rep production from New Orleans. When I saw the dazzling Tony-nominated Broadway production, I wondered whether this peculiar dramatic exercise could work without a mind-blowing, super-sexy, bravura performance to equal the one for which Nina Arianda won the Best Actress Tony Award, potently supported by England’s handsome film and stage star, Hugh Dancy. After all, this play hardly makes dramatic sense. The nervous, insecure young woman who shows up way too late to audition for a new play turns out to be much too prepared, irresistible in her insistence on auditioning, mysteriously possessing a script which she is inexplicably prepared to recite perfectly, and too interested in the playwright’s personal life. Then she entraps him in the sado-masochism of his play based on Sacher Masoch’s pornographic novel (which has no dramatic force), and he responds by taking the woman’s role, switching parts with her, and turning the male into the victim. I won’t give away the ending, mainly because I’m none too sure what actually happens at the end.
About 20 regional theaters are producing this play, and the Cannes Film Festival will feature a new film version in French, directed by Roman Polanski and starring his current wife. I’m glad for such success for playwright David Ives, several of whose plays I’ve liked a lot. And the Polanskis may be able to bring off this sexy showcase and confusing debate on the nature of pleasure and pain in the battle of the sexes. But no, I don’t think this play does work very well without an erotically arousing, show-stopping, dazzling performance. It will certainly get laughs but probably evoke more head-scratching than applause.
Veronica Russell and Todd d’Amour are good actors, but they take awhile to get their interaction really started and then play antagonists better than showing any convincing attraction. They do get laughs when each shows confusion responding to the other, but “S and M” is just something they talk about, not what either one seems to be feeling or conveying. And all this is clearly the work of accomplished pros. Spare me the amateur versions!
