How do you make something as provocative as online pornography boring? Playwright Joseph Gallo achieves the difficult task by using stale romantic-comedy tropes until he all but destroys any possibility of titillation. Director Robin A. Paterson tries his hardest to spice it up whenever possible: It all starts in bed, and if that's where the play's action had remained, we would have been much better off.
Rick (Christopher Halladay) and Venus (Julie Tolivar) are newlyweds living in Los Angeles who are struggling financially because Rick's a wannabe singer and Venus has a dead-end office job. We see them scantily clad on top of the covers after filming a hot and steamy sex session, when Venus wonders if they could put it online and start making money. Although they are soon raking in the cash through a website, Rick is plagued by guilt. Instead of exploring the intricacies of an unconventional lifestyle — how the couple might reconcile a profitable enterprise with a loving relationship — Rick decides he needs to travel back to his small hometown and divulge his dirty secret to his friends and father.
Unfortunately, that means we must trade Venus, perhaps the most interesting character in the play, for a hackneyed cast of sitcom stand-ins. Rick quickly reconnects with loveable oaf Herman (Joseph Barbarino); his bitchy wife, Beatrice (Jennifer Laine Williams); uptight pal Wolfie (John Calvin Kelly), and unfussy ex-girlfriend Elisabeth (Marnie Klar). Add in sincere-yet-sarcastic Dad (Eric Michael Gillett), and you have a Hollywood film in the making, with all the derivative scenes and subplots imaginable: fun in the karaoke bar, judgmental friends who deride the corruption of L.A., a hometown girl pining for her man on her porch. The moralistic message plays out to the very end, mixing religious guilt with small-minded biases. It ultimately fails to bring anything new to a story that, more than anything, doesn't need more sex, just originality.
Presented by Shelter Studios TDG in association with Bridge Theatre Company
at Theatre 54 @ Shelter Studios, 244 W. 54th St., 12th floor, NYC.
Feb. 21-March 9. Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.
(212) 352-3101 or (866) 811-4111 or www.theatermania.com.