The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?: One-sided Story
Paramount Theatre,
November 30
Running Time: 1 hr, 30 min
It’s happened to you. It’s happened to me. Unfairly dropped on your proverbial ass. Plagued by an ever-blackening cloud of self-doubt. Waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for her to call, marking her resolve to return things to the way they were. Well, it’s also happened to Bobby — a guy who’s just been dumped by his girlfriend, right after he asked her to marry him — in Robert Dubac’s The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?, which played the Paramount Theatre last week.
The show begins very sparsely and scathingly. Bobby sits on a stool in front of the stage curtain, perplexed, surrounded by self-help books, as Harry Connick Jr. sings “If I Only Had a Brain.” He launches into a harangue on the seeming endless ream of self-help books available, struggling with an enthusiastic weariness befitting Sisyphus — first holding up a copy of What Do Women Want?, then Eat More, Work Less, followed by What Do Women Really Want?, then 5000 Years of Foreplay.
Then, the curtain goes up. And the captain switches off the funny light. The remainder of the show becomes rooted half in stand-up comedy and half in generalizations — peppered liberally with the phrases “all men” and “all women” — trying its heavy hand at hat tricks borrowed from the men-are-from-Mars-women-are-from-Venus catalog.
Stage right is Dubac’s left brain (masculine and messy, with empty beer bottles lolling about and file cabinets containing, filed under “B,” more beer), while stage left is his right brain (clean and neat, with a white, softly backlit curtain in back of an empty chalkboard and quite empty due to the fact that, by his own admission, he never spends any time there). The highly contrasting stage picture becomes too much real estate quickly as Dubac bounces from left to right, right to left. Match point. Set. Game.
In his left brain, Bobby holds court with four men who he holds responsible for his present predicament: a retired Southern colonel who makes no qualms about his misogyny; an obnoxious French lover; a Brooklynite straight from the back of Mr. Kotter’s class and a raving testosterone ball; and Old Man Linger, a fisherman who claims laughter is the key to a long and happy life. Only Linger breaks from the tried and true mold of Dubac’s typical men. He makes a keen observation after Bobby tries to hang himself: “I would never commit suicide because I have bad handwriting.” He also feels he cannot die until he meets the perfect woman. Mr. Linger’s 123 years old.
In his right brain, Bobby has one voice of reason: a velvet, purring woman’s voice (interestingly, provided by Dubac’s real-life wife, Lauren Sinclair). But there’s only so much advice and devil’s advocacy one can take.
The show has its moments. In one of his better lines, Dubac pokes fun at women who say they don’t want to be viewed as mere objects: “I never hear you ask, ‘Does this dress make me look intelligent? And tell the truth.'”
But the main problem with The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron? is that it turns out to be a soapbox heavily disguised as entertainment. The blackboard is a real teaching tool. Dubac’s spokesmanship for a collective we (the male sex) is wearing, sounding like a one-sided story generated by stereotype and recycled material.
This article appears in December 8 • 2000.