142.
DOMESTICATED
So here I am, a long-married,
heterosexual man, sitting at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, watching Bruce
Norris’s DOMESTICATED, a smart, stinging, sassy, subversive satire about subjects
such as monogamy, gender politics, marital infidelity, the battle of the sexes,
and male sexual desire. The play begins with Bill Pulver (Jeff Goldblum), a middle-aged
politician, struggling embarrassedly to make a public apology for a sexual peccadillo
as his wife, Judy (Laurie Metcalf), stands grimly by, looking up at him with
that classic Silda Spitzer glare. It’s not long, however, before I notice that the 58-year-old Ms.
Metcalf is dressed in a beautifully tailored, off-white pants suit that moves nicely
with her, outlining her trim legs and apparently still buff derriere. Of
course, I simply file this away in my storeroom of visual impressions regarding
the play I’m seeing, just as I do the way Todd Rosenthal’s simple but eminently
suitable set has turned the Newhouse into an intimate arena, and how the
familiar presence of Mr. Goldblum remains as impressively tall and lithe as
ever, albeit with graying and somewhat thinning hair. But I observe Ms. Metcalf’s
appearance with particular attention because she is, after all a woman, I’m a
man, and my psychological makeup is hotwired to respond in specific biological
ways to good-looking specimens of the opposite sex.
Laurie Metcalf, Jeff Goldblum, and Misha Seo. Photo: Joan Marcus.
Of
course, as Ann Roiphe points out in “Order and Desire,” her contribution to the
Lincoln
Center Review’s
collection of essays and art related to the play’s themes, the situation is
more complex than that. Women are also often subject to biological urges that
need to be controlled: “Inside the vagina, blood rushes and throbs intensely,
excitement rises and causes girls to forget their modesty and scream at rock
stars, or dance under disco lights like nymphs at an orgy in the Greek woods,
where Apollo was chased by Venus and mourned by her, too, not for his ability
to shoot a deer but for the beauty of his torso, the wonder of his body.” And "the sexual imagination is a creative force that is equally alive, equally available, to male and female." Sexual
expression is as varied as the phases of the moon.
Laurie Metcalf and Jeff Goldblum. Photo: Joan Marcus.
Social
conditioning prevents us from simply acting on our urges, and most of us live
in a maze of rules and regulations that go under rubrics such as fidelity,
chastity, monogamy, and so on. As Ms. Roiphe notes, “In the real world, sex
must be managed in the service of order, and that is not the most joyous of conditions.”
We are, in other words, domesticated. The conflict between biology and the need
for self-control has been treated in countless books, plays, and movies
touching on sexual indiscretion, but, in Mr. Norris’s stimulating play, the
issue itself, as apart from the results it leads to, is aired in a terrifically
entertaining way that, while providing no specific answers, gives us plenty to
think and laugh about.
From left: Mia Barron, Lizbeth Mackay, Karen Pittman, Jeff Goldblum, Vanessa Aspillaga. Photo: Joan Marcus.
The
escapade that brought Bill down was with a young hooker named Becky (Aleque
Reid) who, while with Bill in a hotel room, fell and hit her head on a bed frame,
putting her into a coma. Bill is the subject of a lawsuit that claims she didn’t
fall accidentally but that he pushed her, and he has to resign from his
(unspecified) political position and express contrition, like so many others in
the Weiner-world of recent years. DOMESTICATED takes us behind the scenes of
his disgrace, where he must deal with a wife, herself a high-stakes player as a charity organizer, who turns on him with all that womanly scorn
with which even hell's fury can’t compete. Not that she’s an angel, by the way, as her
own past includes a college-years affair with the head of—get this—the Ethical
Studies Department.
From left: Misha Seo, Vanessa Aspillaga, Emily Meade, Laurie Metcalf. Photo: Joan Marcus.
Bill turns out to be something of a sex addict, having
spent $74,000 on prostitutes, and also having once had an intimate encounter with
Judy’s best friend, Bobbie (an excellent Mia Barron), who is also Bill’s high-powered
lawyer. DOMESTICATED charts the decline in Bill’s marriage, the hatred he
inspires in his already bitchy, opinionated, and spoiled daughter, Casey (Emily
Meade, very good), the family's economic troubles, and Bill's desperate attempt to get back on his feet by
returning to his previous profession. That profession? Gynecologist! When none
of his patients want to have anything to do with him—including a veiled Middle
Eastern woman who speaks not a word of English but knows all about him (Judy has
written a book)—his reactions are anything but understanding.
In
act one, Bill is almost sympathetic in his wordless reactions to
the vitriol being spilled like acid on him as he stands by struggling unsuccessfully to offer
some sort of redemptive commentary. No one cares to hear him or gives him a
chance to speak, and Judy dominates and fulminates, but in act two the pendulum
swings to Bill’s attempts to justify himself as a
creature of biology who is simply reacting to his natural urges, with no evil
intent. Love is dismissed as merely a convenient cover for lust, which reminds
me of something Samuel Beckett once said to explain his relationship with
women: “This thing called love, there’s none of it, you know. It’s only
fucking. That’s all there is—just fucking.”
To
further enlighten us regarding sexual relations, the play has Bill’s other
daughter, Cassidy (Misha Seo), a Cambodian adoptee in middle school who barely
speaks at any other time, appear periodically to present a lecture with video
clips on male-female relationships in the animal world. As these mini-lectures
progress, they increasingly demonstrate the decreasing importance of the male
and the ascendance of the female.
The
play employs 27 female characters and only one male, with many of the females
played by a handful of versatile actresses, Vanessa Aspillaga, Lizbeth Mackay,
Mary Beth Peil, Aleque Reid, and Karen Pittman (really good in a role spoofing Oprah-like self-serving TV interviewers). There is also an angry
transvestite, played convincingly by Robin De Jesus, who challenges Bill in a
bar, an altercation that forces Bill to wear an eye patch through much of act
two. He keeps saying that it’s really nothing, worst case he’ll
lose the sight in that eye, almost as if he’s accepted this affliction as part
of his martyrdom.
There
are a number of things in the play that could be called flaws, but they’re the
kind that you think about afterward because you’re too busy enjoying the good
stuff to want to dissect it too soon. For example, the cockily defiant Bill’s self-justifications
seem overstretched; his overheated arrogance toward his women patients is
implausible in someone with his background (and in serious need
of a job); Bobbie’s revelation to Judy of what happened between her and Bill is hard to swallow,
even if she’s drunk; and Casey’s lecture seems too advanced for a kid her
age.
But in a season—and
I’m going back to early May—lacking a single new play that rises above
passable, DOMESTICATED stands out like a beacon of clever and involving
theatre, thoughtful, with sharply satirical dialogue in the heard-in-an-elevator
Mamet mode. And all is made even more outstanding by the excellence of an acting ensemble
led by Jeff Goldblum and Laurie Metcalf. These two actors have become among the
leading artists of the New York stage, and are among only a handful of
nonmusical American performers I’d go out of my way to see, no matter what they're in. When they engage in an emotional screamfest of vituperation and regret,
they yank you so forcibly into their private world that you feel you may have
to look away.
Enhancing
everything with pitch-perfect orchestration and timing is director Anna D.
Shapiro, who paces the action and diatribes like a piece of music. Jennifer von
Mayrhauser’s costumes perfectly suit the characters who wear them, telling us
precisely who they are and what kind of tastes they have. James F. Ingalls’s lighting
makes the open space of the arena stage a palette for the many isolated scenes.
DOMESTICATED
gives New York theatergoers their first important new play of the season. The
competition so far, on and Off Broadway, has been abundant but the quality slim, so one can only hope things get better. Last
year, Chris Durang’s VANYA AND MASHA AND SONYA AND SPIKE opened at the same theatre
at just around this time, and went on to Broadway, winning numerous awards.
Will lightning strike twice in the same place? A season earlier, Bruce Norris won the Pulitzer for
CLYBOURNE PARK. Will DOMESTICATED, even with some critical naysayers having
expressed their views about it, have similar good fortune? All I know is that I was
impressed by the play and its production; also, I’m still thinking about Ms.
Metcalf’s derriere.
