Festival of Comedy
Quick, which of the following is obscene: a woman juggling dildos, or two bare-breasted women embracing? The lyrics to an old Beatles tune (“I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than be with another man”), or a lesbian in pasties entertaining her friends with “I Wanna Be Loved By You”? If you’re not sure, you can compare the options by seeing these productions. Girl Party–the companion piece to Party, a popular all-male gay comedy–offers straight talk about lesbian sex, some nudity, and a little sexual horseplay. Zebra Crossing Theatre’s An Act of Obscenities, part of the Griffin Theatre’s “Festival of Comedy,” investigates through music, monologue, and performance the notion that “obscenity” is something that can be measured, defined, or legislated.
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The program describes An Act of Obscenities as “a show about what’s nasty and who decides.” It opens with its three performers in judges’ robes, rattling off a list of what they consider obscene, in the strictest Oxford Dictionary sense: Spam, snot, the Imperial Chemical Corporation, and the salary of a pro baseball player. From there they draw on everything from congressional transcripts to popular songs, demonstrating how censors have struggled through the ages to cope with the always-slippery definition of obscenity. In Queen Victoria’s day, a piece of literature was banned if it “stirred tumescence”–the Queen is presented here in a rhinestone tiara, contentedly eating Spam, and assuring us that one doesn’t actually view the filth oneself. One hears about it from a reliable source, and then bans it.
By that measuring stick, where would Girl Party stand? There is every possibility it will give someone a boner, and it probably boasts more social than artistic value–after all, there aren’t many comedies about lesbians, and why should that portion of the community be deprived of wacky situational humor? There may be a call to arms here. As one of the characters says, “Dispel the stereotype! Show the world a lesbian can have a sense of humor. Let’s be a whole roomful of funny lesbians–I don’t think that’s ever happened before!” I’m for it, I just wish they’d been given a slightly better play to be funny in.
It’s such a joy to find a play that skewers new-age mysticism. “Believe all is well, and all will be well,” says Aunt Guenevere in Robert Kerr’s Six Characters in Search of Water. But Guenevere also changes her name on an hourly basis, plays bridge with an invisible partner, and thinks she is Jonathan Livingston Seagull. And all is not well.
