Theater Review Part Deux: My Boyfriend, The Stripper

by Mark-Brian Sonna of of MBS Productions

Penis.

Lot’s of them.

In all shapes, sizes and colors.

Whoa!

The Dallas Hub Theater is hosting The Angry Dominatrix’s regional premiere of My Boyfriend, The Stripper by Ronnie Larsen. The other Larsen play that people might be familiar with is Making Porn. Larsen is known for writing gay plays that have gratuitous male nudity. At the same time Larsen wields a scalpel at the gay community’s fascination and obsession with sex. It’s not a flattering picture, but it is honest. Larsen is not the best wordsmith, though. His dialogue frequently falls into platitudes and his characters tend to be overdrawn and lack depth. His ideas are good, but his scripts feel more like extended sketches versus full bodied plays.

My Boyfriend, The Stripper follows the lives of six gay men living in San Francisco. The play begins with a surprise birthday party being thrown for Adam, a single man who is somewhat shy about his sexuality. During the party a stripper named David is brought in. They hook up. The other two couples in attendance are Bud, the hot young twenty two year old who is looking for the next best thing, and his quasi-boyfriend Gavin, an alcoholic Yoga instructor. I say quasi because the relationship is more sexual then emotional. The other couple is Peter, an insecure swishy man who is desperate for sex for he isn’t getting any from his partner Larry, a university professor that teaches a gay studies class. As Adam and David’s relationship solidifies, the other two couples’ relationships fall apart. In the end new partnerships are made. The running thread is that David, the stripper also freelances as a photographer of erotica and is able to convince some of the other characters to pose for a book that Adam is helping him to get published. As the men strip for the camera, we get to see who they really are and what makes them tick. It’s a very obvious metaphor. It also allows the audience to view the parade of penises presented.

The production values are good in this show. The lighting works very well with the minimal set. The costuming is spot on. I noticed in the program that many of the people involved in this production are also from Anagram Productions, and their high standard is well manifested.

Besides the script the other area where the play falters is in the acting. Some of the actors are more seasoned then others and it shows. It doesn’t help that the dialogue doesn’t aid them. Frequently emotions turn on a dime, and regardless of how good the actors may be the dialogue is simply not believable. Ivan Jones as Adam does as much as he can with his character given the constraints of the lines. He makes Adam genuinely likable, and imbues him with more depth then there is in the script. Ben Hales as Bud is also good and in this case Larsen’s platitudes feel right because Bud is very shallow. I’d love to see Mr. Hales tackle other more complex roles. He has a natural stage presence that fascinates. The rest of the cast isn’t as strong: there were some weak acting moments, and some volume problems. Less experienced actors will project properly when another character is across the stage but when they get close to the person they are speaking to their volume drops just like in real life. The audience needs to hear the dialogue regardless of the distance between the characters. David Jason as Peter found himself in the unenviable position of having to help cue some of the other performers as they tripped over or forgot their lines. If they didn’t forget the lines, the lengthy pauses made it seem that way. In fact there were so many awkward pauses that the pacing of the show got derailed. This is the second week of the run so it’s more rehearsed; I can only imagine what opening week must have been like.

The direction by Jack Gardner was uneven. The director allowed the stripper to do his strip for far too long. There is a thing called stage time versus real time. In real life the strip probably would have lasted that long, but on stage where the eye of the audience is focused, time frequently has to be shortened. We knew we were going to get our first penis shot at the end of the strip, but by making the dance go on so long the director inadvertently raised our expectations that we are going to see a whopper of a member -a la major porn star in size- and well, it’s not. No offense to Mr. Martin, it’s not bad, but for all the build up I was expecting John Holmes. The same thing happens in the yoga scene; it felt like I was watching a yoga class, interesting for about thirty seconds, but it ran much longer then that. Where the director excelled is in working with the ever so difficult parade of ultra short scenes Larsen has written. The switches from scene to scene worked nicely and he overcame this inherent and major obstacle in the script.

Is the show good? Not really. But I must confess I wasn’t bored. There is something luridly voyeuristic that kept everyone’s attention. I wouldn’t recommend this play to my straight friends, and I’d tell my gay ones to go see it if they want to get eyefuls of genitalia, some that is quite nice to look at.

As someone who collects mugs of shows I’ve seen and liked, I would have been curious to see what a mug design would have looked like for this show had they made any as souvenirs. Not that I would have bought it, but I would have been curious. Obviously it would have been phallic in its shape.

The show runs through July 12 and tickets can be purchased online or by calling 877-238-5596.