Sexual Perversity in Chicago

Sexual Perversity in Chicago

The Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo, www.paladintheatrecompany.com

Through May 30

Running time: 1 hr., 15 min.

I wonder how many men would want relationship advice from David Mamet. I'd be utterly fascinated to know which women would seek out his advice. Mamet has always been a polarizing figure for his rough 'n' tough style that offers little sympathy.

Enter Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Mamet's 1976 play. In a world where women are always easy and dicks are always hard, finding sex may be easy, but love proves all too hard to hold on to.

In a lot of ways, Sexual Perversity is actually one of the least Mamety of Mamet's plays. Part of it is structure: a highly episodic one-act. Part of it is his characters: with half of the four-person cast consisting of women, it has an attempt at balance as opposed to the overwhelming testosterone of other works. Part of it is subject matter: relationships, love, and sex hold different weights to them. Now, there's more than enough F-bombs and derogatory phrases in Sexual Perversity, lest you worry that this is some digression by Mamet from his canon.

Paladin Theatre Company's inaugural production wades into this world that is half raunchy comedy/half depressing love tale. The shifting story revolves around Deborah and Danny, two attractive young adults who meet and move in together, and their respectively jaded friends, Bernie and Joan. The scenes are varied enough in their episodic array to include straight-up relationship stuff, guys being guys, monologues, etc.

Director Charles P. Stites has crafted the production to be more character-driven and humane then you'd expect from Mamet's heartless world of bed-hoppers. Breanna Stogner's Joan surprises by adding sillier and more fragile elements to a character who can easily be played as a hardhearted bitch. The entire cast is very endearing in the face of bad breakups and crass accusations.

Perhaps because of this more humane slant, I couldn't help but notice how disconnected the characters here really are. It's almost Chekhovian at times, the way characters won't pick up on one another's true desires. All four characters come from clear viewpoints on love and sex which, no matter how hard they try, can't be amended by one another. That truly is depressing. Deborah and Danny, supposedly our model of young love, have a chemistry that is superficial at best, born out of mutual arousal.

While the message on relationships does go through some dark and dirty paths, Sexual Perversity is really quite a funny script. The jokes are predominantly bawdy and raunchy in excess, led by live-wire lothario Bernie. As played by director Stites, Bernie manages to be a worldview and a real person at once: disgustingly hilarious, an out-and-out asshole, a fragile boy destined for shallow fraternity and loneliness.

Sexual Perversity presents love as strangely fleeting, elusively falling between scenes and characters in a way that we're not sure how it's won or lost. Paladin's production brings us into the emotions behind such loss, such anger, and provides some good laughs to boot. – Avimaan Syam