Photo Source: Monica Simoes
"Your suite is ready," an usher exclaims after announcing my name to the approximately 20 people (the theater's capacity) in the couch-laden lobby. She escorts me to an attendant, who leads me into an opulent chamber with a pianist in the corner. Set designer Alfred Schatz cloaks the room in red velour, which costumer Jessica Pabst echoes in the piano man's tuxedo. "Enjoy your stay," the attendant says as he goes off to fetch the remaining audience members one by one, until black folding chairs form a semicircle around the central (also red) bed. Designer Keith Parham's lighting is low and eerie yet romantic, with an antique-looking chandelier hovering in the center of the room.
Enter Dr. Sarah Bauer, the sadomasochistic mistress of ceremonies for "Pink Knees." A controversial hands-on sex therapist who tells her mentally challenged 17-year-old son that she's a schoolteacher, Bauer fixes marriages by creating orgies for broken couples, during which she exposes their deepest sexual insecurities. (Her naked husband also hides under the bed.) However, she's the most dysfunctional person in the room. Tonight she pairs a rich lawyer and a doctor with a bohemian playwright and a comedian and forces them into uncomfortable situations. While it's easy to focus on the sex (and sustained nudity), Ahonen's characters quickly unfold as flawed three-dimensional human beings. He treats each with respect as both writer and director, and the top-notch actors make this sometimes ridiculous scenario plausible.
Sarah Lemp commands the stage in her unfaltering portrayal of Bauer, while Jordan Tisdale delivers an emotional yet controlled performance as Bauer's distraught though loving husband. James Kautz and Vanesssa Vache are convincing as a privileged couple torn apart by a three-year affair, while Anna Stromberg and Byron Anthony perform such a convincing sex scene that it's hard to believe it was simulated. Nick Lawson provides the pinnacle performance as Bauer's son, eliciting tears from everyone in the room as his character questions the outlook of the next generation of sexual beings. Is there hope? Or will we always be slaves to desire?
The bed turns counterclockwise for "Animals and Plants," which transports the audience to a downtrodden motel room in Boone, N.C. The audience's chairs form the walls of the taxidermy-infested room, where Dantly and Burris, partners in some sort of drug trade for 10 years, mull over chicks, balls, and farts while snow falls unceasingly outside their window. Rapp's dialogue propels the play, and fear and dread crescendo like a suspense film without music. William Apps and Matthew Pilieci bare all, literally, and their chemistry infuses Rapp's witty and biting words. Brian Mendes and Katie Broad complete the picture with their subdued portrayals of Buck and Cassandra, a separated married couple. Buck, a sort of magical figure, lives and lurks in the motel, and Cassandra finds a kindred spirit in Dantly. The supernatural elements are odd at times, but the motel setting somehow excuses and augments them. The ending is unexpected and disturbing, and though I wanted to sit on the edge of my seat, I was scared to move nearer.
Though almost four hours long, the production is never dull, and together the plays create an effect that lingers in the mind for days. They stimulate, shock, and disturb, and while the fourth wall never crumbles, the actors may as well be in your lap. "Thank you for sitting so close," Rapp writes in a program note. Thank you for letting us, Amoralists.
Presented by the Amoralists and the Gershwin Hotel at the Gershwin Hotel, 7 E. 27th St., NYC. Aug. 10–Oct. 10. Mon., Wed.–Sat., 7 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 2 p.m. (212) 868-4444 or www.smarttix.com.
