Also this issue:

Tilted View
One Philadelphian's quest to bring a controversial piece of public art to our city.
-Robin Rice

Odd Fellows
-Jen Darr

BodyVox
-Janet Anderson

Louis Menand
-Sam Adams

tick tick ... Boom!
-Steve Cohen

Carmina Burana/Le Travail
-Janet Anderson

By the Bog of Cats ...
-Toby Zinman

Three plays at Triangle Theater
-Toby Zinman

February 20-26, 2003

theater

The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?

Well, the curtain-raiser took me by surprise, at least. I thought we'd start right in with Guys-versus-Dolls. Instead, The Male Intellect begins at the moment of conception! Had I stumbled mistakenly into a quirky, transgendered revival of The Vagina Monologues?

Anyway, it didn't take long to realign itself. This was indeed my assigned show, and I was in the presence of spielmeister Robert Dubac, who wrote and performs uh, let's just call it Male, since it's utterly impossible to call it Intellect.

Soon he was launching into the ol' Mars/Venus routine. Men are this. Women are that. Yadda yadda yadda.

And that's where it lost me. I might as well admit at the get-go: As a gay man, I never know how I fit into this bipartite schematic. I'm male, of course, but I certainly don't seem like the guys Dubac is talking about. I'm organized, reasonably tidy, a huge cat lover. Let's see, what's my planet? Saturn, maybe (the ring is chic). No, I guess it would have to be (bada bing) Uranus.

Still, I think I know from funny (that's one thing My People are good at) and let me tell you, this is pretty damned witless. After the initial setup -- Robert is dumped by his girlfriend and wants to know why -- it's just a string of one-note jokes. OK, I laughed at the early stuff about self-help books. But mostly dead silence, from me at least.

And though Dubac tries to liven things up by playing several other roles -- the chauvinist pig Colonel, a quirky old guy, a pretentious French philosophy student -- they're just as dumb as the rest of it.

So what can explain the show's success? That's the scary part. It must be an extended happy hour: date-bait for drunken 20-somethings desperate for a conversation starter.

Maybe it's not so bad coming from Uranus.

--David Anthony Fox

Another Planet Heard From

At what point, sociologically speaking, did men decide that self-abuse was the way to go? Is it a pre-emptive strike? Assholes Anonymous? I denigrate myself, therefore I am?

Since my co-critic has established the confessional mode for this review, here is mine: I fell asleep. In a long career of theater-going, I have never dozed off before. And since I qualify, pop-astronomically speaking, as Venus, and my date as Mars, we were the target audience. But not a snicker from us, much less a laugh. Not a chuckle, not even a rueful, isn't-that-the-truth smile. Robert Dubac is, to use his term, a bonehead. His logic is so faulty you don't even try to argue with it (i.e.: equality = absolutely the same. Or how about, Why do men go bald? Trying to figure women out. If a woman goes bald, she must be a lesbian because some other woman is making her hair fall out). His accents are pathetic and his attempts at comic gestures (the eyeroll, the strut, etc., etc.) are so generic they wouldn't cut it on a late-night furniture commercial. This is one of those guys who is so convinced of his own charm that you never have to speak if he tries to pick you up -- he talks for both of you, enjoying himself immensely.

Much of the audience yukked it up -- when they weren't leaving to go to the bathroom or buy more bottles of beer at the bar which, of course, resulted in their leaving to go to the bathroom again. Each time somebody stood up, Dubac mocked him or her, and then made a big deal of waiting for the audience member to return (making an already too-long show longer). This is, as my Mars bar said afterward, a bad, too-long comedy club routine.

--Toby Zinman

Through March 16, Society Hill Playhouse, 507 S. Eighth St., 215-923-0210