"THE JOYS OF SEX"
I have a hunch that the Off-Broadway show "The Joys of Sex" will be history before this review is published.
The show's PR suggested that this show is like "'Sex and the City' set to music." Oh, if only that were true! "Sex and the City" is smart and hip, consistently amusing, and plausible. The humor arises from situations we can relate to, situations very much grounded in real life. The press release likening "The Joys of Sex" to "Sex and the City" led me to expect
a great deal more than this show delivered.
"The Joys of Sex" has a great title; I'll give it that. And I'm happy to see anyone create a new musical comedy. But this show is uneven--amusing and involving only in spots. It can'tseem to make up its mind whether it wants to be realistic (as "Sex in the City" is) or go for the cartoony feel of a terribly dumbed-down TV sitcom. The book is credited to both Melissa Levis (who also wrote the show's lyrics, which were sometimes quite well done--fresh and surprising) and David Weinstein (who also wrote the show's lively and erviceable, if not terribly memorable, music).
"The Joys of Sex" feels like a series of sketches. Some of the sketches work, some don't. For me, the show isn't particularly joyous or sexy. I've very much liked past work by director
Jeremy Dobrish; I associate him with edgy, offbeat, smartly turned humor. But some of the material in this show is too one-dimensional to do much with.
The scene about a young couple struggling to conceive was amusing, and completely realistic (although it seemed overly derivative of the musical "Baby"). By contrast the scene about a thoroughly square middle-aged couple, Gladys and Irving, turning out to have a secret double life as afficionadoes of a Greenwich Village sex club, The Vault, felt artificial, the humor forced.
It was as if a writer sat down and said, "Wouldn't it be hoot to set my conventional, middle-class parents down in a swinging sexual situation?" Except I couldn't buy that the people in this show would be there at that club. There was no foundation for the idea--other than perhaps that a writer thought the situation would get some easy laughs, that these people would look ridiculously out of place in the sex club. The scene just felt dumb, contrived, and it had me looking at my watch, wondering how much longer the show would be running.
I am perfectly willing to suspend disbelief if the writing in a show is funny enough or clever enough. And the concept that ordinary-looking people can have surprisingly unorthdox sexual tastes is certainly true.
But this scene just seemed so obvious--the whole joke being that these squares secretly do wild, crazy stuff. And isn't this really wild, wild, crazy, stuff, folks? I could practically feel
the writer nudging me in the ribs with his elbow, reminding me where I'm supposed to laugh. And I'm thinking, "No, this is just pretty juvenile." Like some little kid who's just discovered there is such a thing as sex and that his parents have sex, and he's telling his friends on the playground.
For my tastes, the show worked best when it felt human, down-to-earth, and somewhat nuanced. I could believe the character Brian Shapiro, pining after his more sexually
sophisticated and adventurous neighbor, April Jones--who wasn't attracted to him because he seemed "too nice." That dynamic was true to life. And having him then share with her--but not the audience--something she found kink, felt real too.
I liked the scence in which a character proudly recalled some past too-good-to-be-true sexual exploits; the writers effectively contrasted the character's bragging with what really happened. That scene, too, had a ring of honesty to it. And when Brian attempted a bit of courtship over the internet, having no idea he was chatting with someone he actually knew--well, that premise is realistic enough.
David Josefsberg does a very good job doubling as the awkward, needy but likable Brian, and as his own grandmother. Stephanie Kurtzuba likewise is effective as both Stephs Nolan, a woman struggling to keep the spark alive in her marriage, and as
Brian's mother, Gladys. Jenelle Lynn Randall is appealing as the sexy April Jones, Ron Boehmer the stolid Howard Nolton.
There are some laughs. But also moments of tedium. This show's look and sound struck me as feeling somewhat cheap and cheesy. I found the over-amplification off-putting. Although I had terrific seats, close to the stage, I was very much aware I was listening to metallic, over-miked voices, not to human beings standing just a few feet in front of me. I found the sound produced by the three musicians (drums, Roger Cohen; bass, Stefan
Held; and piano/"SINFONIA," Stephen Ray Watkins) to be blaring, artificial, and unattractive. At the show's conclusion, I felt like I was being literally pushed out of the theater by the nnoyingly loud, strident, and mechanical-feeling exit music.
It really rubbed me the wrong way.
--L. D.
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